Communication and Language Personal, Social and Emotional Development Physical Development

 Evoke the landscape of the story in a large activity tray for
children to create narratives together. Add sand, pebbles, leaves
and bark along with small world characters.
 Encourage children to talk about their favourite animal in the
story using full sentences to explain their selection and asking
each other questions about their choices.
 Use questions, such as “Will she like…?” and the phrase, “I
wonder…” throughout the day. Offer children choices and enable
them to express preferences.
 Hide the animals from the story in the outside area. Each time
children find one, encourage them to describe it using a wide
variety of adjectives.
 Provide these Handa's Surprise Sequencing Cards and invite
children to peg them in the right order on a washing line and
then retell the story to each other.
 Pass a pebble around the circle. Each child has a turn to
name a food to go in Handa’s basket.
 Talk about surprises. Why was Handa surprised in this story?
Why did she want to give Akeyo a surprise? Have the children
ever received surprise gifts?
 Encourage children to help prepare healthy fruit snacks for
the group. They could wash fruit and help slice bananas or
avocados. They might create faces made from fruit too.
 Play a themed ring game to encourage children to take turns
and cooperate. You might use ‘Here We Go Round the
Mulberry Bush’ with animal actions suggested and modelled
by the children.
 Discuss Handa’s friends and family. Use the illustrations in
the book to discuss things they do. Perhaps children could
draw pictures of the people Handa knows.
 Offer orange-scented playdough to make fruits for Handa’s
basket by rolling, squeezing and pressing. Provide pictures of
different fruits and some small baskets.
 Encourage children to explore balancing baskets or quoits on
their heads and walking along chalked routes or planks. Add
different surfaces or slopes for a challenge.
 Make cardboard heads of the animals from the story with cut-
out mouths. Invite children to feed them with conkers or pom-
poms using spoons or tweezers.
 Invite children to move in different ways like the animals. They
could flap like parrots, swing like monkeys or stamp like
elephants.
 Play hide-and-seek. One child is Handa and counts to ten while
the ‘animals’ run off to hide. Once found, each animal can help
Handa look for the others.

Literacy Mathematics Understanding the World Expressive Arts and Design

 Provide baskets, fruits and animal masks.
Create a path outdoors and invite children to re-
enact the story using language from the book.
 Make alliterative animal names, such as ‘zoomy
zebra’ or ‘giddy goat’, encouraging the children
to join in.
 Invite children to write letters from the animals
to Handa using their phonic knowledge. They
might say which fruit they took and why.
Children might also try Handa's Surprise
Caption Writing Activity.
 Invite children to create “I like…” books for
Handa, Akeyo and some of the animals which
feature objects that start with the initial sound
of their names.
 Explore subitising using real or pretend
fruit from Handa’s basket. Hide and reveal
fruits or arrange them in dice patterns.
 Invite children to create a pictogram of
their favourite fruit or animal using sticky
notes. Compare numbers for each option.
 Hide ten tangerines (either real or cut-outs)
and invite children to find and add them to
a large ten-frame. Talk about how many
there are and how many there still are to
find.
 Compare different fruits using balancing
scales or by measuring lengths using
interlocking cubes.
 Explore the concept of one less as the
 Use real fruits from Handa’s basket and
explore using all the senses. Children might try
tasting while blindfolded or feeling fruit inside
a bag.
 Create tangerine pomanders using cloves.
Talk about the contrasting scents.
 Design maps to show Handa’s route to
Akeyo’s village and show the spots where the
animals were hiding.
 Find out where favourite foods come from
(perhaps by looking at items in a local shop)
and locate these on a world map.
 Talk about the features of the savanna using
non-fiction books, videos and online
resources. Encourage children to record some
 Create tapping rhythms to accompany Handa
and the animals. Children might use claves or
wooden spoons and pots.
 Invite children to build Handa and Akeyo’s
houses using resources, such as wooden
bricks and plant materials.
 Provide natural materials for children to create
paths for a Handa figure to follow from village
to village.
 Invite children to create clothing for Handa
and Akeyo by decorating plain fabric. They
might use fabric crayons or attach cut out
shapes.
 Offer a selection of traditional music from
Kenya and neighbouring countries for children
Handa’s Surprise
 Write CVC words on cut-out fruit images and
hide them for children to find, read and collect in
animals take the fruits away. Invite
children to find ways of recording this.
facts that interest them. to respond to by dancing or playing
instruments.
a basket.