Funnybones’ can be used in the classroom in several ways. In English lessons for example, children can learn to appreciate the use of rhyme, alliteration, onomatopoeia, punctuation, speech and simple sentences. Pupils could explore the beginning of the story to help them write their own creative story with a repetitive refrain. In KS1 classes, the teacher could also use the book as a point of reference to explain how speech marks are used as well as other relevant punctuation. Dog: The pet dog of the skeleton brothers who loved bones, digging holes, and found everything that the skeleton brothers need.

This delightful story, with its vibrant illustrations, teaches children the important lesson that it’s okay to be different and that everyone can find joy in the same activities. The Morals featured in the Funnybones story includes: Funnybones is a popular children's book written by Allan and Janet Ahlberg. The story follows the adventures of a family of skeletons - even the pet dog is a skeleton! Have fun and join in with this In a Dark House song, which has been set to the familiar tune 'Are You Sleeping'.This book also has many potential curriculum links to Science because of the theme of skeletons and bones. In the classroom, teachers could discuss the importance of skeletons and the names of important bones. Also, the reference to ‘dark’ and ‘night’ could prompt discussions and activities about light and dark sources. Similarly, how and why we get day and night could be explored in the classroom. With reference to Art, pupils could draw and label human/animal skeletons for a class display. The skeletons like to explore at night time. Why do we have day and night? What happens to the Earth and Sun to give us light times and dark times? Dr. Bones: The skeleton doctor (who wore a doctor's coat and glasses with a first aid kit, a stethoscope and a leg tapping hammer) who helped Big and Little to stop them from bumping in the night and everything else etc. in the episode "Bumps in the Night" and everything else in other episodes. Dog gets left behind when Big and Little decide to visit the dark, dark dinosaur museum. When Dog follows Big and Little to the dinosaur museum, he thinks a huge, huge dinosaur wanted to hurt them.

The author uses ‘word repetition’ throughout the book to make it enjoyable to the reader and also to make it humorous. A song is also included in the book, and I remember as a child reading the book over and over again and singing along out loud!

The human body and skeletons in the National Curriculum

The pictures in the story are all based in dark places. Investigate light and different light sources. Funny bones by Janet and Allan Ahlberg is one of my most favorite childhood books!! The book is about…”a big skeleton…a little skeleton…and a dog skeleton…” one night all three were bored in bed and decided to go outside to “scare somebody”. The story goes on, the skeletons walk past the houses on the street, and the shops, and past the zoo, and past the police station and finally go to the park where they look for someone to scare! There are lots of examples of onomatopoeia in the story (e.g. woof, miaow, boo). Can you think of any more? We've got tonnes of teaching and learning resources to help you in different subjects too. For English lessons, use writing framesto show off their work and word mats to work on vocabulary. This is ideal for inspiring and boosting their reading and writing skills. Not to mention practising their pencil control and helping their handwriting improve!

It is a particularly dark, dark night tonight, and Big and Little keep bumping into each other, making them fall to pieces, and there is only one thing to do: send in Dr. Bones, who does a great job of patching them up to stop them from bumping in the night. On the television series of Funnybones, six episodes have the same title based on the storybooks, but three had different titles of storybooks based on the same episode, and the other three never had a storybook as source material. The final episode of the television series, however, was based on the first storybook of Funnybones, while the first episode was based on the second storybook called "The Pet Shop". All twelve episodes were originally shown on BBC One and repeated on BBC Two as part of the Children's BBC strand, as it was known before 1999, on Tuesdays at 4:00pm. In Year 1, children will learn to name, draw and label the basic parts of the human body. This is expanded on in Year 2 when children will look at the differences between living and dead things. Funnybones is a great short story that decpicts the tale of three skeletons, big skeleton, little skeleton and dog skeleton. The three skeletons go out for a night walk with the intentions of scaring some people, however they can't find anyone to scare. During the course of the walk they visit the zoo, re-assemble the dog skeleton and set about scaring each other. Dog is having his favourite dream, the one about a big, juicy bone. After Dog wakes up from his favourite dream he chases after other animals that have got the big, juicy bone including Cat.The English voices were provided by popular comedian Griff Rhys Jones, who also sang the theme song as the Moon Man whilst the original Welsh voices were provided by Ray Gravel, who also sang the theme song as the Moon Man. Watch the animated series and explain which you prefer. There are lots of episodes available online. Here is one of them: The use of repetitive language and songs further add to the stories features and add a great amount of fun and laughter when the story is read aloud. Both the adults reading the text and children can join in with this. I feel that it cannot only be used as a literacy focus, but the story itself has scientific features. Children are able to extend their biological knowledge of the structure of the human skeleton. This will assist in enlarging their language vocabulary.