Five Fat Turkeys – ABA form

“Five Fat Turkeys Are We” is one of my favorite songs to teach to little folks during the holidays.  It’s a fun song with a great story and most importantly it gets kids to think critically. I love asking kids questions and telling the story of the song in a way to get kids thinking critically about what makes a turkey different.Why would five turkeys hide in a tree?  Is it weird for turkeys to be in a tree?  They’re birds, right?  Birds live in trees…   It’s worth taking the time to teach this song as a story and ask kids questions about the players in the story and the intent of each character.   If you’re teaching this song to kindergarten or 1st grade they may not be able to make the connection that a turkey wouldn’t hide in a tree or that hiding the tree saved them from being cooked.  When you help them make these connections they have a lot more fun with the song and learn so much more.

What makes this song a true gem is that it’s incredibly catchy and singable.  It’s super easy for kids to pick up and run with right away.  Kids also get to say that the turkeys are fat (which I’ve found that kids universally love).  If you don’t know this song, then check out this AMAZING resource by Aileen Miracle of Mrs. Miracle’s Music Room.  She’s got a ton of ideas and songs in this packet!  Songs, SMART board files, printables, games, rubrics, assessment, and SO MUCH MORE.  It’s totally on my TPT wish list and by the end of the week is going to go into my cart, I’m sure!

The only thing I dislike about the song is that it’s so short.  You sing one quick verse and the song is over.  There are some books you could incorporate with the song and some extension activities, but I wanted to extend the life of the song itself.  Read on to see what I did to alter the song and make it longer.

Adding the “B” Section

One of the goals for my first graders this quarter (from my district curriculum) is to recognize ABA patterns in songs.  There are a lot of fun songs out there that can easily be turned into an ABA form and this song is no exception.  I taught students the regular tune “Five Fat Turkeys” and then told them that there was another part to add to our song.  We spoke this part in our whisper voices and this is what we said.

Hide, hide, try and hide.  
Do not let them catch us
Hide, hide, try and hide.  
Do not let them catch us

And this is the rhythm we used.

Ta, Ta, Ti ti, Ta
Ti Ti, Ti Ti, Ta, Ta.
Ta, Ta, Ti ti, Ta
Ti Ti, Ti Ti, Ta, Ta.

This was really fun and took only about 30 seconds to teach.  Then, voila!  It’s an ABA pattern song.  Now to make it really fun and show the pattern with turkeys!  I pulled out three extra foam turkeys and wrote the letters “A B A” on them.  I propped them up to show the different sections of the song and we sang it again.

The final element – a circle dance!

The last thing that we added to this song was a quick circle dance.  We all stood in a circle and sang the first part or “A” section of the song.  I added in some silly little actions to match the words of the song:  hold up 5 fingers for the first phrase, make your best “tree pose” for the second phrase, act like an angry cook searching the ground for the third phrase, and happy turkey face for the last phrase.  For the “B” section that we made up I had each kid grab the hands of the student next to them and shuffle clockwise in the circle as if they’re trying to quietly find a place to hide or scurry away.  Halfway through the “B/poem” section we changed directions and shuffled the other way.  It was so cute to see my first graders grab the hands of the person next to them and quietly shuffle along saying, “Hide, hide, try and hide!” as if they were turkeys before Thanksgiving!

Every year I decorate with my foam turkey die cuts.  This year I decided that the turkeys were gonna take their own advice and hide as high as they could.  Last week I put out a few turkeys and turkey die cuts down low but this week I put them up on top of things.  Kids immediately noticed and that made a GREAT segue for the song.