A Plague of Frogs

There has recently been a plague of frogs in my classroom. They cannot hop independently, and they are not slimy. They do make noise, but only when you hit them with something! These frogs are lovely, hand painted, wooden instruments called guiros. These manipulative give the children opportunity to work on many different skills and learn some fun new songs.

I’ve enjoyed watching the children with the frogs over the last several weeks, as they learn to say the different frog sounds and choose what each color of frog says. I realized that I used a song that is not on your CD, and then changed the song from its original format to serve my educational goals. (This is an age old tradition in the folk song world called piggy-backing.)

Now that many of you are going to be having a frog guiro or two come live in your house, I wanted to give you the instructions for the song we did in class, plus a couple of other songs you can do with your frog.

The melody for “Gang Goon” is an old girl scout song, and has had many different lyric variations over the years. I know I learned the melody as “Great Big Globs Of Greasy Grimy Gopher Guts” as a grade school kid.  My cousin, Britt, and I wrote endless variations of this particular version; all of them full of alliterated nasty things floating on McGilligan’s pond.

We once cleared a campground in New Mexico of a rowdy bunch of RV campers by marching up and down behind their camp signing this lovely little ditty for hours.  They left the next morning.  (And you doubted the power of song to change the world!) We also flooded the roads in the campground by building a fabulous little dam on the river so we could go swimming and spotted Big Foot – but those are other stories….

So here are the words and the instructions for Gang Goon. This is the frog version rather than the alliterated, gross version.  I’ll leave your children to learn that one on their own.  The instructions for what you do with your striker on the frog are above the lyrics. The frog, of course should sit placidly in your palm while you sing and play.  (That’s the benefit of wooden frogs- they don’t hop away!)

Click on the play button to hear the song:

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scrape scrape                                        tap
Gang   goon went the little green frog one day

scrape scrape                                        tap
Gang   goon went the little green frog

Scrape scrape                                        tap
Gang   goon went the little green frog one day

                                  scrape scrape scrape
And they all went ging    gang    goon!

                                   tap         swish your striker
But we all know frogs go Lahdeedahdeedah!

Swish your striker    swish your striker
Lahdeedahdeedah!  Lahdeedahdeedah!

                                   tap          swish your striker
But we all know frogs go Lahdeedahdeedah!

                           scrape   scrape   scrape
They don’t go ging       gang     goon!

The motions with the striker and the frog stay the same as you go on to the other verse.   You simply change what the frog says, like to ribbitt.  The frog that says croak also gets an adjective change to big, slow (a tempo change is nice here, too) and the frog that says SHHHH is a quiet frog. 

You can change the animal in the song and add all kinds of adjectives and sounds, and turn this little song about a frog into a whole lesson on how words work, how we form them in our mouths and how much fun they can be to play with. This is a great way for kids to learn how language works.

Woof Woof went the tiny brown poodle dog….
Meow went the black and white cat
Moo Moo went the Holstein cow
But we all know they all go Lahdeedahdeedah!!!  

-posted by Miss Allison, who is glad the plague in her classroom these past few weeks wasn’t bees – or fleas!