Hare and Tortoise: Musical Storyland

BBC Teach > Primary > EYFS / KS1 Music > Musical Storyland

The traditional story of Hare and Tortoise is told by Nihal Arthanayake accompanied by members of the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra.

The video

Hare and Tortoise

Presenter: Nihal Arthanayake
Composer: Daniel Whibley
Instruments: Clarinet / Bassoon / Double Bass

Synopsis

Hare is proud and boastful, and spends all day running and racing and finishing first.

With no one else to race her, Hare feels bored and so promises never to boast again if anyone can beat her. To Hare's surprise, Tortoise agrees to race.

Hare is so confident that she can beat Tortoise that she goes to a disco the night before the race, and doesn't get enough sleep. Tortoise on the other hand, eats a healthy meal and goes to bed early.

On the day of the race Tortoise is at the start line early, slowly doing her warm-up stretches. While a sleepy looking Hare arrives with just a minute to spare… still in her disco shorts from the night before.

The race starts and Hare is off like a shot, while Tortoise smiles and sets off at her own pace.

After getting up late and missing breakfast, Hare is feeling hungry so stops for something to eat. She's tired from her night of disco-dancing and falls asleep by a tree.

By the time Hare wakes up, she sees Tortoise far off in the distance about to cross the finish line. Hare runs faster than she'd ever run before and reaches the finish at the same time as Tortoise. At the very last moment Tortoise stretches out her long neck to cross the finish line first. Tortoise is the winner!

Hare sees how happy Tortoise is, and how pleased the other animals are for her. After that, Hare still raced every day, but she kept her promise and never boasted again.

Curriculum links

Music
The film and the accompanying Teacher Notes can be used to fulfil the following objectives of the Key Stage 1 music curriculum, which states that pupils should be taught to:

use their voices expressively and creatively by singing songs and speaking chants and rhymes
play tuned and untuned instruments musically
listen with concentration and understanding to a range of high-quality live and recorded music
experiment with, create, select and combine sounds using the inter-related dimensions of music.

English
The film and the accompanying Teacher Notes can also be used to target objectives from the Key Stage 1 English curriculum, particularly relating to Spoken language, Reading and Writing.