The Three Billy Goats Gruff Sack
Product Code
MES0547
Contents
• Story Book and CD
• Selection of instruments
• Puppets or props to inspire creative music-making
• Teachers’ notes
Introduction
Each creative music sack uses a well known story book as a stimulus for exploring
sound and inspiring music-making. Through shared listening, the CD and book
provide starting points for young children to respond using voices, movement and
simple instruments. The teaching notes give ideas for adult-led and child-initiated
play which encourage the first steps into composition through the exploration of
different musical elements featured in each story.
Aims & Objectives
To stimulate the imagination of young children through stories which lead into
exploring, recognising, creating and organising sounds using voices and simple
instruments.
Links in the curriculum
EYFS: Play and Exploration, Active Learning, Knowledge & Understanding of the
World, Creative Development
Music Education Supplies, Park Lane Business Park, Park Lane,
Kirkby-in-Ashfield, Nottinghamshire, NG17 9LE
Tel: 0800 138 1370
Web: www.mesdirect.com
Email: [email protected]
The Three Billy Goats Gruff Sack
Suggestions
Introducing the story
Play the CD as you show the children the matching pictures in the book.
Re-tell the story yourself using the puppets and bringing out the humour in the story
so that children are not frightened by the troll!
Use your voice expressively to emphasise descriptive words and phrases, e g:
• Deep, dark hole - low -pitched, slow voice
• Green and sweet - warm, smiley voice
• Big and fat- loud and strong
• Little billy goat and trip trap hooves - high-pitched, squeaky, light
• Rickety bridge - wobbly voice
• Troll - grumpy, low-pitched voice - a bit scary in the last line of the song!
• Middle-sized goat and trip trap hooves - middle pitch, moderately loud
• Big billy goat and trip trap hooves - low-pitched, loud, and confident
• His knees shook, his hooves trembled - wobbly voice
Make a sound using your voice as you show the troll finger puppet flying through the
air ‘into the middle of next week’ at the end of the story. Eg wheeeee, or whooooosh
Re-tell the story, encouraging the children to join in with the vocal sounds and
repeating patterns of words, eg
trip trap, trip trap
• repeat the pattern several times as the children enjoy exploring their high,
middle and low voices
• use hands on knees or step alternate feet
Use the troll puppet to teach the children the words of the song as a chant, with the
same rhythms on the CD. Show them the troll puppet and say each line, one by one,
for the children to copy:
I’m a troll, from a deep dark hole,
My belly’s getting thinner,
I need to eat - and goat’s a treat So I’ll have you for my dinner.
Leave the puppets, picture book and CD so that the children can explore further
during child-initiated play. You may like to provide the resources to help children
construct a play area inside or outside which represents the green juicy grass,
stream and bridge so that the children can re-enact the story in their own way (even
growing a patch of grass ‘field’ if you wish!)
Use a sand or water tray for an inside area. Use construction blocks to build a bridge
for an outside play area.
The Three Billy Goats Gruff Sack
Play ‘Who’s on the Rickety Bridge?’ with voices and movement
Show the children the three billy goat puppets and remind them of the trip trap
pattern. Ask them to use their voices to match each billy goat. Ask them to move like
each billy goat, stepping on the spot with small, quiet, middle or large loud footsteps.
Hold up one puppet at a time, in any order. Can the children find low, middle and
high vocal pitches and make appropriate footsteps to match?
Say this chant:
Rickety bridge, rickety bridge
Who’s crossing the rickety bridge?
Small goat, middle or big?
Who’s that crossing the bridge?
At the end of the chant use your voice to say the trip trap pattern in a high middle or
low pitch. Ask the children to identify the goat which is crossing the bridge by pointing
to the matching puppet.
When the children are familiar with the game choose an individual child to lead the
game. This child uses their voice and stepping movements to trip trap across the
bridge and the listening children guess which goat the child has chosen to act out.
Using the instruments
When the children are familiar with the story and have explored using their own
voices and bodies as instruments, re-tell the story using the three tambours.
Show each of the children the goat puppets and remind them of their trip trap
patterns. Now show them the three tambours. Play each one and ask them to match
them to the goats (ie. largest drum with largest goat etc).
Explain that the largest drum makes the lowest/deepest sound and the smallest
makes the highest (some children may be used to using the word high to mean loud,
rather than pitch, so this needs careful explanation).
Re-tell the story with the instruments. Choose three children to move the goat
puppets and three to play the tambours, plus another child to move the troll puppet.
As each goat crosses the bridge the matching tambour is played.
Play ‘Who’s on the Rickety Bridge?’ with instruments
Use the three tambours and puppets to play the game. This time choose a tambour
to play the trip trap pattern. Can the children identify the matching goat?
When they are confident with the game, hide the tambour and play it out of sight.
Can the children hear and recognise the low, middle or high pitch to find the
matching goat?
Leave the props for this game where the children can play it by themselves.
The Three Billy Goats Gruff Sack
Compose music with junk instruments
Help the children to make sounds on junk instruments and compose music for
repeating parts of the story:
Stream
shake and tip plastic bottles with pebbles, or shells filled with water
coloured with blue food dye
Rickety bridge tap together wooden spoons, wood off cuts or wooden bricks
Green grass
make a newspaper rattle by rolling up sheets of newspaper, cut the
top two thirds into strips, tape the bottom third of the roll to make a
handle. Shake to make a gentle sound like long grass blowing in the
wind.
Combine the stream and rickety bridge sounds each time they are mentioned in the
story. Shake the grass rattles each time the grass is mentioned.
With the children make a picture or collage of the scene which the children can use
to re-tell the story using the puppets, their voices and/or instruments.
Compose a troll song
Add a simple tune to the troll chant to turn it from a chant into a song. Use two or
three chime bars to work out a simple tune, eg:
Ri-cke-ty bridge, ri-cke-ty bridge
E E E D
E E E D
Who’s cros-sing the ri-cke-ty bridge?
D
D
D
D E E E D
Small goat, mid-dle or big?
A
A
A A A A
Who’s that cros-sing the bridge?
D
D
E
E E D
Teach the children to sing the simple melody and incorporate this in the story.
Leave two or three chime bars for the children to explore making up their own troll
songs. They may make up their own new words, too!
Perform the Three Billy Goats Gruff story
Combine any of the ideas above in a performance of the story. You may like to
perform the story in music with very few words of narration, using a picture score the
children have made to remind them of the sequence of sounds (see example score).
Adapt the story to incorporate the children’s own ideas for sounds, words and
movements which they have discovered in their play.
The Three Billy Goats Gruff Sack
The Three Billy Goats Gruff music
Stream
Troll song
Green grass
Stream
Troll song
Green grass
Bridge
Bridge
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Stream
Bridge
Troll song
Green grass
Music Education Supplies, Park Lane Business Park, Park Lane,
Kirkby-in-Ashfield, Nottinghamshire, NG17 9LE
Tel: 0800 138 1370
Web: www.mesdirect.com
Email: [email protected]