un éléphant se balançait...

 One elephant went out to play on a spider's web one day...

I had never heard of this rhyme in English, knowing only the French version - but stumbled across it when looking for craft ideas for this week's new French song.  If you would like to take a look at the English version, you can find it on the sparklebox website here: http://www.sparklebox.co.uk/

Although the 2 versions are slightly different, they are both very sweet and lovely to sing and act out. 

Traditionally, the children would be in a circle with one child in the middle as the elephant, with each verse the "elephant" chooses another to come and play on the spider's web until when there are 5 of them the web breaks and they all fall to the ground.

The French version goes like this:

Un éléphant se balançait

1.          Un éléphant se balançait

sur une toile, toile, toile, toile d’araignée

c’était un jeu tellement amusant

il appela... un deuxième éléphant.

2.          Deux éléphants se balançaient

sur une toile, toile, toile, toile d’araignée

c’était un jeu tellement amusant

ils appelèrent... un troisième éléphant.

3.          ils appelèrent... un quatrième éléphant.

4.          ils appelèrent... un cinqième éléphant.

5.          Cinq elephants se balançaient

sur une toile, toile, toile, toile d’araignée

c’était un jeu tellement amusant

que tout d’un coup – BA DA BOUM!

 

The tune can be found on the brilliant Mama Lisa's website: www.mamalisa.com 

For those of you that are not familiar with this website it is an absolute treasure trove of children's songs and rhymes from around the world with mp3's of the tunes so that you can have a go at singing them yourself!  Well worth a visit! :o)

 

Our craft activity this week was to create our own spider's web with 5 elephants.

 

To make your own, you will need:

a paper plate,

scissors,

wool,

sellotape,

five little elephant blanks on thin card

feltpens, glitter, etc for decorating

 

The instructions are as follows:

1. Snip small triangles around the edge of your paper plate.

 

2.  Weave over and around the plate with the wool randomly to create your web.

 

3. Colour in the elephants and number them 1 to 5

 

4.  Add any other decoration to your web/plate/elephants as you wish

 

5. Stick the elephants on to the plate.

 

Here are our finished spider webs and elephants:

 

 

 

 

A simple but effective craft idea I think!

Happy singing and crafting! :o)