The traditional story of Ananse and the Monkeys is told by Jan Blake accompanied by members of the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, with guest multi-instrumentalist Sidiki Dembélé.

The video

Ananse and the Monkeys

Presenter: Jan Blake
Composer: Daniel Whibley
Instruments: Djembe and the Calabash / Piccolo / Cello

Synopsis

Ananse's family are hungry and need to earn money so they can eat. Ananse decides to use his sewing skills to make hats to sell at the market.

Ananse makes sixteen hats, puts them into a big basket and walks through the forest towards the market. Feeling tired after the hard work, he takes a nap under a huge tree, but doesn't realise that up in the tree is a family of monkeys. The monkeys came down and each take a hat from Ananse's basket.

Ananse wakes up to find fifteen monkeys wearing his hats. He asks for them back, but the monkeys refuse. Ananse realises that the monkeys copy everything he does. When he scratches his head, the monkeys scratch their heads. When he makes a funny face, the monkeys make funny faces.

Ananse has an idea. He removes his own hat and throws it to the ground. The monkeys copy and the hats rain down from the top of the tree. Ananse is able to sell every hat at the market, and uses the money to buy his family a good meal. He also buys sixteen bananas and, on his way back, gives each of the fifteen monkeys one, saving one for himself.

That night Ananse and his family ate a delicious meal and the monkeys slept soundly in their tree, dreaming of hats and bananas.

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.

Resources

Teacher Notes. document

Download / print the Teacher Notes for this episode

Teacher Notes

The instruments. image

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The instruments

Vocabulary. image

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Vocabulary

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