The Three Billy Goats Gruff Retell Literacy Center Activity

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Create your own The Three Billy Goats Gruff retelling activity with this free download for kindergarten.

This is how I created a Three Billy Goats Gruff retell activity to go in our retell center as a storytelling option for my kindergarten students.

Let me show you what’s in our set and give you the materials to make it happen in your classroom too.

It’s one of my favorite literacy centers and we usually introduce The Three Billy Goats Gruff by Paul Galdone in late spring.

It’s a simple plot and allows my students to focus on how the story is woven together.

We are usually ready to try our own hand at writing a similar style story. We end up having creative stories like ‘The Three Butterflies and the Big Bad Bee’ that crop up during writer’s workshop since they know this story so well as a foundation.

But when they are retelling this story at our retell center, they read they act, they use lots of great vocabulary and are developing fantastic reading habits all while continuing to build their love of reading.

My kinders get to choose the book(s) they want to retell while they are at this literacy center. This one is usually a favorite.

What’s in my Three Billy Goats Gruff retell set

Here are the props I gathered rather inexpensively (and you can too) to bring the book alive once we knew it by heart.

I found some printables online and I colored them by hand and laminated them. They are stuck onto thick popsicle sticks with clear mailing tape make them last as stick puppets.

The beanie baby and troll were donated but I know you can find them at a garage sale or choose one or randomly at the dollar store! I know it’s not the troll from the story, but it’s a troll… and I’m cool with working outside the box.

How to make your own Three Billy Goats Gruff retell activity

If you plan to make this a year-long literacy center, I highly recommend that you read the Retell Literacy Center Directions for more details and making everything run smooth.

Because you can make this kindergarten activity yourself and once you and your students are hooked on retelling you’ll want to make this a year-long thing.

Here are the materials you’ll need… (may include affiliate book links to Amazon)

Materials

The Three Billy Goats Gruff Props (free download)
Troll (stuffed animal or plastic)
Goat(s) (stuffed animals, plastic or printable masks)
The Three Billy Goats Gruff Book by Paul Galdone

What to do

Take your book copy and your props and place them together. A container like an open basket, a book bin or a large Ziploc bag will work!

We liked to keep a blanket nearby these materials so that they could create a theater-like puppet stage to sit behind.

But all they need to do is have the book and the materials and use the props to tell as much as they can:

about the story
from the story
with the story (following along)

Encourage kinders to use as many words from the text as they can remember. With a patterned story like this one, it’s pretty easy, especially if you read this story multiple times before you release it to your students.

And when you’re done reading the classic version – it’s time to dig into other versions of this story to compare.

Conclusion

There you have it – how to make a Three Billy Goats Gruff retell activity for your class. I love that it doesn’t require much to get it done. {wink}

If you like this activity, check out this list of 20 more famous stories that are great for retelling in kindergarten. Most of them are just as simple to pull together and I’ve found all of the downloadable resources for you.