T is for Tiger- Teacher's Notes

You can use this as a spelling song, having the kids lay out the words with abc cards, or racing to the board to write them. Alternatively hide the crucial words whale-rhino-tiger-horn-meat-fur-mother-brother-baby-family in am abc square for the kids to find and circle. For small children colouring animal pictures and making an animal dictionary is ideal. Contact the WWF for a list of animals hunted for their products...turtles, seals, bears, gorillas, the list is endless. The Body Shop has a pamphlet on endangered species and soaps in the shapes of animals which make a good Christmas gift if you're teaching a small class. Have the kids guess, in quiz form, what products we get from a particular animal and then talk about alternatives which avoid harming the animals (I love knitting, myself.) This song has a kind of Indian tom-tom beat, so you can have the kids thump sticks on the floor and click stones together in a tum-ta-ta tum-ta-ta rhythm to give it an ethnic feel. If you want to produce the song for a small culture event have each child be an animal and stand up between verses to speak a message to humans.

A light animal game is to have two animal teams, say tigers and rhinos, at each end of a preferably large room. The teacher is Lord of the Jungle and orders the animals, saying "Tigers, take two steps forward," "Rhinos, take two steps forward" etc. Varying the number of steps and the direction. When the teams get close together you can either say "Rhinos, catch Tigers," or vice versa, and the prey rush to get back to their wall before they are caught.