Liz Kitchen returns with more songs, rhymes and listening games to join in with and a story about a hungry crocodile and some very clever rabbits.
Suggestions for classroom use
Introduction:
Listen all around: Traditional African drums.Individual sounds: river water, baby crocodiles, fire burning.
Song: (to the tune ‘London’s burning’)
Fire is burning, fire is burning
Crickle crackle, crickle crackle
Fire, fire! Fire, fire!
Pour on water, pour on water!
Sing as an action rhyme (making hand or body movements for the fire burning, miming shouting then pouring on water). Divide the children into four groups to sing one line each while everyone makes the actions. More able children may be able to sing the song as a round.
Rhyme time:
If you should meet a crocodile,
Don’t take a stick and poke him,
Ignore the welcome in his smile,
Be careful not to stroke him;
For as he sleeps upon the Nile
He thinner grows and thinner,
And whene’er you meet a crocodile
He’s ready for his dinner!
Followed by:
How does the little crocodile
Improve his shining tail
And pour the waters of the Nile
On every golden scale?
How cheerfully he seems to grin,
How neatly spread his claws,
And welcomes little fishes in
With gently smiling jaws.
Story time: The rabbits and the crocodile
Once upon an African time… To hold attention on first hearing, show appropriate pictures for the animals. Make simple card masks for rabbits and crocodile, for children to act out the story. Useful activity for strengthening finger muscles: use a lamp to create simple shadows on a wall – make crocodile jaws by using hands to make jaws, use fingers to make rabbit head and ears. Perform the story as a shadow play
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