Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed

1-2 min read
5 pages

Five little monkeys jumping on the bed — the full counting rhyme from five down to one, with the doctor, the telephone and the mother.

This is a counting rhyme pretending to be a story, and the counting is the part that does the work: five, four, three, two, one, with the same four lines around each number so that the only thing changing is the one thing you want the child to notice. Hold up the fingers and put one down each verse, and a three-year-old will be counting backwards before they can count forwards. The doctor says the same sentence five times and is ignored five times, which children find extremely funny and which is, if you look at it, the joke of the whole rhyme. Nobody is hurt in any lasting way and nobody learns anything — the monkeys simply run out. Said at bedtime it also does something useful: it is a rhyme about stopping jumping on the bed, delivered while sitting on the bed, and the last line puts everyone in it.

Five little monkeys jumping on the bed, One fell off and bumped his head. Mama called the doctor and the doctor said, «No more monkeys jumping on the bed!»

Four little monkeys jumping on the bed, One fell off and bumped his head. Mama called the doctor and the doctor said, «No more monkeys jumping on the bed!»

Three little monkeys jumping on the bed, One fell off and bumped his head. Mama called the doctor and the doctor said, «No more monkeys jumping on the bed!»

Two little monkeys jumping on the bed, One fell off and bumped his head. Mama called the doctor and the doctor said, «No more monkeys jumping on the bed!»

One little monkey jumping on the bed, He fell off and bumped his head. Mama called the doctor and the doctor said, «Put those monkeys straight to bed!»

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Text source: Traditional American counting rhyme and fingerplay, author undocumented, handed down by word of mouth. Public domain. Only the afterword is ours. www.gutenberg.org

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Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed

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