RIC-20935 Early years Fairytales - Billy goats

Cross-curricular activities
Health and physical education
• Explain that goats, like cows, are sometimes kept
for the milk they produce and for meat. Discuss the
different products that can be made from goat’s milk
and make a list. Consider how healthy for people
each product is and why some could use goat’s milk
products instead of cow’s milk.
• Talk about what trolls might also like to eat other than
goats. List and draw, or cut out pictures of types of
food trolls might like to eat to make them healthier and
‘nicer’ creatures.
• Play ‘Who’s on my bridge?’. Using chalk, draw a
bridge on the ground or mark it out using building
blocks or rope. The children line up and walk over
the bridge and back. Play music and when it stops
the child(ren) standing on the bridge, or the last one
to cross it, is out of the game. The last child left is the
winner.
• Set up an obstacle course representing a trail the
goats have to follow to get to greener grass. Include
a large climbing frame with a bridge, witch’s hats
(representing grass) to weave in and out of, balancing
boards (representing slippery rocks in the stream),
tunnels to crawl though, a number of hoops to jump
into, tyres to step into etc.
• On a warm day, take the children to a sunny, grassy
area to roll around in, walk barefoot in, and to feel the
grass.
• Talk to the children about how the different goats
would move. Encourage them to take quick, short,
light steps like Little Billy Goat as he went ‘trip, trap,
trip, trap’ over the bridge. They could then take slower,
longer, heavier steps like Big Billy Goat, and, finally,
really slow, heavy, longer steps to move like Great Big
Billy Goat Gruff. They could also try to work out how
the troll might move.
• Set up a plank of wood
for the children to take
turns walking along,
trying not to overbalance
and fall into the ‘river’.
Increase the difficulty of
the activity by making the
plank longer, narrower or
by asking the children to
‘trip, trap’ along it like
one of the three goats.
• Play ‘Goat, goat, troll’ instead of ‘Duck, duck, goose’.
Children sit in a circle and one (the troll) child walks
around the outside of the circle, touching each child on
one shoulder saying ‘Goat’, ‘goat’, ‘goat’ … When the
child says ‘troll’ instead of ‘goat’, that child, the troll,
must jump up and chase the child until he or she gets
safely back to the spot where the troll had been sitting.
The troll then walks around the circle, repeating the
process of touching shoulders. But if the troll catches
the first child before he or she has reached the spot,
that child has to sit in the middle of the circle until the
next person is caught by a troll.
• Collect and heap a number of large cushions and/or
pillows. Cover with a large piece of hessian to create
a ‘soft’ bridge. Encourage the children to find different
ways to move across the bridge—rolling, crawling,
using large walking steps etc.—while barefoot or
wearing socks only.
• Play ‘bridges and trolls’. The children work with a
partner to form a circle. One child is the bridge and
stands with his or her legs apart, forming a bridge, and
the other is the troll who sits behind the bridge (trying
to look mean). The teacher calls out either ‘trolls’ or
‘bridges’. If ‘bridges’ is called, all the children who are
bridges must run around the outside of the circle and
back to their spot and stand there as a bridge. If ‘trolls’
is called, all the trolls must crawl through their partner’s
legs, run around the circle, crawl back through their
partner’s legs and into their sitting position. The idea
is to be the first back in position. The way children
move around the circle can be changed. They could,
for example, ‘trip, trap’ like a little billy goat or a great
big billy goat.
6 Early years themes—Fairytales—The three billy goats Gruff www.ricpublications.com.au – R.I.C. Publications ®