The Twelve Dogs of Christmas



 





The Twelve Dogs of Christmas by Emma Kragen is a fun book about the narrator of the story receiving a different breed of dog from her true love during the first eleven days of Christmas.  For example, instead of a "partridge in a pear tree," the gift is a "poodle in a doghouse."  The gift on the twelfth day is a surprise for everyone.  The book comes with a CD, and the story is sung to the tune "The Twelve Days of Christmas."  

It is an easy and inexpensive story to do at Christmastime, and the kids love it.  I do it as an audience participation story.  I went online and searched for images of all the dog breeds mentioned in the story.  I found photographs or artwork of the breeds and the correct number of dogs for that specific day.   I saved the images to my computer and then printed them.  If you can't find the correct number, but do find one with more dogs, you can still save the image to your computer.  Once it is saved, you can open it and then go into Microsoft Office Picture Manager to crop out the extra dogs.

 

I cut out the color copies of the dogs and then glued them onto 8" x 11" card stock.  I numbered the papers one through eleven on the back.

For the storytime, I hand out one picture each to eleven of the children, and explain when to hold it up to show all the children at the program. 

 

I begin the CD, and everyone usually sings along.  When it is time for the child to hold up their photo, I point to them.  The kids love this story.The programmer holds the twelfth day of  Christmas at the end of the story. 

 It is a cat! The story ends with all the dogs barking at the cat.

 

It is also fun to tell the children that Emma Kragen wrote this book when she was only seven years old.  I try to inspire the children to write their own books.