This is a really good one for building suspense. I’ve seen children as young as two sat with their hands all ready, waiting for the signal to pop the bubble.
If you lay one hand palm-down on the back of the other and interlace your fingers slightly, you have a turtle shell. Your thumbs can be its front flippers and so it can swim around. Actions for drinking and eating are obvious enough. And for the last line, imagine you are holding a giant bubble and each time you say the word, make it a bigger bubble, then clap loudly on the word “pop”. The last line is spoken.
I had a little turtle, his name was Tiny Tim.
I put him in the bathe-tub to see if he could swim.
He drank up all the water and ate up all the soap.
And now he’s sick in bed with a bubble in his throat.
Bubble, bubble, bubble…POP