Oat the Goat

Free online story helps children learn the power of kindness

Oat the Goat is an online digital animated story book which helps children see the surprising power of kindness. You don’t need to use the word ‘bullying’ to begin to teach young children prosocial skills that will prevent bullying behaviour. The focus is on learning how to get on with each other.

Oat the Goat helps you talk to the children in your classroom about the choices they have when they see someone being bullied – Should they laugh? Ignore them? Or include and be kind to them? Oat the Goat shows that being kind always wins in the end.

It’s designed for 4-7 year olds but may suit other age groups. So let’s get started…

Read Oat the Goat

Oat the Goat is available online so please organise a screen big enough for all the children to watch to maximise their learning experience. If you need to use a laptop, and don’t have a projector in your classroom, you might need to break the class into smaller groups for the experience. If the children have individual devices, you could also ask them to read it to each other in small groups.

You can read the story in te reo Māori or English. Then you have three choices - read the book yourself, have it read to you, or watch it together. We would recommend you click the ‘Have it read to you’ option the first time to hear narrator David Fane (English) or Piripi Taylor (Māori) read it to you. Then you can experiment with different options.

The music soundtrack and awesome animation helps brings the story to life and we are delighted to present the symphonic sounds of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra (NZSO) alongside traditional Māori instruments taonga pūoro.

Let's talk about it...

It’s important that all children understand the storyline and the meaning of any new words first before they engage with the discussion ideas below.

These prompts may be useful for you to ask the class. You could guide them through each question as a class or organise your children into pairs or smaller groups.

• Were there any parts of the story that didn’t make sense? 
• Have you ever seen someone who is being picked on - just like Oat the Goat saw happen in the book? What was that like for you? Let’s talk about it...
• What did Oat the Goat realise was the best thing to do when he saw someone being bullied?
• What do you think is the best thing for you to do when you see bullying?

Note to teacher: Here you can emphasise the point that the best thing to do is show kindness to the person being picked on. You could say ‘Are you okay? Come and play’. Just like Oat!

Things to consider after reading the book

• Feel free to build your own classroom experience around the story book. You know what works best for the children in your classroom.
• Encourage the children to talk to each other about their feelings and things other people do and how they might feel.
• Talk about and practise taking turns, sharing, helping, and looking after others to build positive behaviour.

Fun colouring-in activities

Print out and share these colouring-in activities - perhaps have an Oat the Goat colouring competition.

Spread the word

Please share the story book website links with your ECE or school community using your regular communication channels. Feel free to post the links on Storypark and your social media channels, such as Facebook, to help spread the word.

Display these posters around your school.

Get in touch

If you want to get in touch, email us at: oat.thegoat@education.govt.nz