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Five Little Men in a Flying Saucer

five little menDan Crisp (illus)
Child’s Play
Age 0-3

This is an illustrated version of the well known rhyming song. The board book version has holes for little fingers to explore. The rhyme is ideal for joining in and children can have fun counting the number of little men in the flying saucer. In addition, the illustrations build a story with an environmental theme alongside the rhyme, encouraging children to wonder why the little men flew away and what was happening on Earth.

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Share the story

Read the rhyme
Read, or even better sing, the story to your child.

Watch the rhyme


From Twinkl Educational Publishing 

Join in
As you return to the book on different occasions, children will become more confident about joining in with the spacemanrhyme themselves.

Once your child is familiar with the song try leaving out one or two of the rhyming words and encourage your child to sing or say them.

For example, ‘They looked left and….but they didn’t like the …’

Have fun counting
Count the little men left in the flying saucer on each page. Little fingers poking through the holes can represent the aliens. You might like to draw tiny faces on your child’s fingers to make this more fun!

Talk about the pictures
What is happening on Earth? Look at the illustrations and talk about what your child can see in each of the pictures and why some of the little men decide to fly away. Why do some of the little men look sad?

Things to make and do

Play the story
Cut a circle from an old piece of cardboard or cloth – an old pillow case or sheet would be perfect for this. Help your child find 5 toys to be the little men and place them on the cloth (or flying saucer!). Sing the rhyme together lifting the little men as they fly away.

Paint a picture
Give your child a big piece of paper with a circle drawn on it to be the flying saucer so that they canpaint the little men in it.

Find out more

Read more songs and rhymes together. The same series by Child’s Play includes:

* The Wheels on the Bus

Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star

Old Macdonald

Down in the Jungle

Ten Little Monkeys

* See more lovemybooks ideas