Over the school holidays we visited friends in Europe. The landscape was so different, and I took lots and lots of photos (it turns out I have a thing for bare tree branches arching over streetlights in the gloom. Especially if it also involves water nearby and/or cobblestones).

More on that later.

Today I have a skipping rhyme for you in celebration of Year of the Monkey. (Happy Chinese New Year!)

You can share it with anyone and print it off — as long as you leave my name attached to it … and do find a rope and skip to it. Well, OK — maybe not today because it’s eleventy-hundred degrees in Perth and we are all wilting. (If you are in another Australian state, feel free to skip to it.)

I really loved skipping rhymes as a child, and I loved the skipping part too, especially in a big crowd with two people turning the rope.

OVER IN THE JUNGLE — A SKIPPING  RHYME by Rebecca Newman

Over in the jungle
it’s the monkeys’ time for lunch.
They like to eat bananas,
they eat them by the bunch.

Father likes the yellow ones,
Mother likes the brown,
and Baby likes the green ones
munching upside down!

Stay cool. Skip on!

~ Rebecca