Play the memory game with your pre-readers by making two copies each of key animal figures from the book. Cut out the pictures all the same size and paste each onto a cardboard square. Place all of the tiles animal-side up. Let your toddlers help you turn over the tiles and then try to find the creatures again -- in pairs. If you match two, take them away. If you turn over a mismatch, return both tiles to animal-side down and repeat.
Have a group of preschoolers sing the popular song "The Wheels on the Bus," allowing each child to make up a lyric and the movement that goes with it. Sit in a circle and go around, beginning with the "wheels on the bus go round and round" and then adding verses. Try "the boots on the bus go stomp, stomp, stomp" or add applause with "the hands on the bus go clap, clap, clap."
This variation of bingo with rhyming words is appropriate for children ages five and six available. Use cards that are 4-inches square and divide them into 1-inch boxes; copy 1-inch square details of rhyming words, such as pig/wig, goat/coat, from the book's illustrations. Paste pictures into the 1-inch boxes. Give each child one card. Make tiles with one word on each; choose words that rhyme with the chosen pictures, such as big and float. Pull the tiles from a hat or bowl one at a time. Have the children cover a rhyming match with a coin or checker. Play for four markers in a row.
Set up a bus by lining up four chairs in two column rows with an aisle down the middle. Assign each child an animal passenger. Read the story aloud and let each child act out his entrance to or exit from the bus. If you have more pupils than there are characters, assign two worms, sheep and so on: one group will board the bus, and the others go home. If you have an odd number of kids, let one be the frog bus driver and use a toss ring as a steering wheel.