Meet Mousie!

Here is Mousie.

Mousie is one of the first and easiest puppets I ever made. I also use her all the time! In my previous post I talked about using a mouse to teach piano dynamics (you can check it out here) and whilst I used a cat toy for my Piano mouse, you could also use Mousie if you wished!

There are also so many folk songs about mice, especially at the lower primary level! Some of my favourite songs and games featuring mice are as follows:

Little Mouse Be Careful

This is one of my all-time favourite chase games and the kids never grow tired of it. To play, one person is chosen as the "cat" and they leave the circle to go and stand in a corner with their eyes, ears, noses etc. closed. In the meantime, the teacher silently chooses someone else to be the "mouse". Once the cat has come back, they prowl around the circle (and I've seen some great young actors showing off their prowling skills!) until at one point in the song the mouse leaps up and runs around the circle, trying to get back to their spot before the cat can catch them.

It's a staple of my junior music classes and an absolute Kodaly classic.

This song is great for teaching taa and ti-ti and the opening phrases are great for discovering la. In older years, my seniors have a great time revisiting this fond memory to find the fa in the third line too. It's the gift that just keeps giving!

The Old Grey Cat

This fantastic song is great for preps looking at contrasting tempo as the song sets up a pattern of slow, stealthy actions (an old grey cat is sleeping, wakes up and smells a mouse creeping about. The cat stalks after it) until POUNCE! The cat attacks and the mouse goes scurrying!

This song also ties in really nicely with some Art Music listening - Octavio Pinto's "Run, Run, Run" (Many thanks to one of my Kodaly levels lecturers Kate Thompson for that idea!) Children use the actions from the song to respond to the music and show whether they think it is fast or slow.

I used to do this song just with Mousie until I found a Mrs. Norris cat puppet in our school toy library and now I use both! I really like that Mrs. Norris' cranky expression and ruffled eyebrows makes it look like she just woke up!

Hickory Dickory Dock

This nursery rhyme classic works really well with a clock puppet which I will upload next week (keep an eye out for it!) and is a great way for young students to engage with music and explore their singing voices - or even just to sit back, listen and enjoy the music! (All while developing their respectful audience skills)

I've bundled together each of these great folk tunes along with some lesson plans, worksheets and most importantly the Mousie puppet patterns and instructions and it's available on my TeachersPayTeachers store here

Or, if you're just interested in the Mousie template and instructions, you can grab them separately here.

Do you have any favourite mouse-related music? Comment below and tell us all about it!

Happy stitching, happy singing!