Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel

"Mike Mulligan and Mary Anne had been digging together for years.  Mike Mulligan took such good care of Mary Anne she never grew old."

Dig some holes!  My son loves digging holes and pretending to be Mike Mulligan - he even insists on dressing like him most days.  So, it wasn't difficult to enlist his help with digging a "cellar."  We chose to dig in the garden dirt, but if the ground is too hard, you could always dig in a sandbox!

"Never had Mike Mulligan and Mary Anne had so many people to watch them; never had they dug so fast and so well; and never had the sun seemed to go down so fast.  'Hurry, Mike Mulligan!  Hurry!  Hurry!' shouted the little boy.'"

Practice being a fast worker!  This is a great activity if your Littles have energy to burn!  I gave my son different tasks (one at a time) to complete, set a timer, and told him to try and complete the job before the timer went off.  Since the weather was pretty warm, most of the tasks involved filling up a watering can to water our garden containers, pour out over his toy trucks, fill up other jugs, etc.  The jobs weren't done as "neat and square" as Mike Mulligan, but my son was so excited to race to get things done!