The Teddy Bears' Picnic for Easy Piano - composed by John Walter Bratton

"The Teddy Bears' Picnic" (with or without the apostrophe) is a popular children's song. It started life as an instrumental piece composed in 1907 by the American composer John Walter Bratton (1867-1947). Since then several songwriters have added lyrics to the piece to turn it into a song. The most familiar lyrics ("If you go down to the woods today..." etc.) were written in 1942 by the Irish songwriter Jimmy Kennedy (1902-1984). In this form with Kennedy's lyrics, numerous artists have performed and recorded the song, and it has been included on various albums of children's popular music.

On mfiles we have gone back to the original music to publish a number of instrumental versions. The one on this page is the arrangement for "Easy piano", so suitable for educational purposes for piano students. You can find the sheet music and audio files for download in the left-hand menu, or by scrolling down the page below. On mfiles we also have a more difficult version for Intermediate Piano, the original and most difficult version for Piano Solo, and an arrangement for Bassoon and Piano.