"Three Little Pigs" Activities

from the Teachers.Net Kindergarten Chatboard
http://teachers.net/mentors/kindergarten

(March 1 is National Pig Day)

Jacque/WA/K-1's request:

I'm looking for math and literacy activities related to The Three Little Pigs folk tale. So, of course, I come to my best resource…

vanna/tx responded:

Here are some of the things I've done:

Compare the weight of straw, sticks, and bricks, use a balance scale to demonstrate. Before you weight them, talk about which one they think is strongest and why.

Sing the 3 Little Pigs Rap- It basically retells the story in rap form. I'm sorry I don't know who the artist is, I burned it from a friend and didn't get the info, but it's a FAVORITE of my class each year - very "rock n' roll".

Blow pictures - Let the children choose between red (bricks) yellow (straw) and brown (sticks) paint. Pour a dollop of their choice onto a paper. Have the child use a drinking straw to blow the paint across the paper. Next, have them dictate a sentence about their painting. For example, "I'll huff, and I'll puff, and I'll blow your house down!"

We read 5 different versions of the story - one for each day of the week. We compare and contrast the different versions. Then we talk about which was our favorite and graph our favorite version.

Day 5 we also act out the story using head bands made from sentence strips. The pigs have pink ears on their headbands and the wolf has pointy brown or gray ears. We act it out several times until everybody has had a turn to participate. You can include a director and prop master if you have a lot of students.

I include a shoe box of sticks, straw, and one brick in the science center during 3 Little Pig week. They are fascinated with them and will try to re-build the pigs houses with the straw and sticks.

I also include the story at the listening center and flannel board during this week.

Jean responded:

I like to discuss settings and events with this story. We list the settings and then illustrate each on a 12" by 18" piece of construction paper. (Depending on which version you use, you may have such pictures as the mother pig's home, the straw house, the stick house, the brick house, the turnip field, the apple tree, the fair, inside the brick house by the fireplace.) You may want to draw the outline and let children work together in small groups to color in the settings, or you may just have them already prepared as the children name the settings.

We discuss the events that occur at each setting and act it out in the whole group. I'll put out the illustrated settings (with magnetic tape on the back of each) as a center and the children have to sequence them onto the chalkboard (magnetized). You can put numbers on the back to make it self correcting. Then they can put on masks and act out the events in the correct order.

With P. Galdone's version, it's great to use with a math lesson on telling time. Give the children clocks and have them show the time identified in the story as it is being read. You can put out clocks in the listening center as well (along with the story).

Cloe70 responded

The 3 Little Pigs Rap is by Greg and Steve (or is it Steve and Greg? They are great. I love all their music. They also have a 3 Billy Goats Gruff song).

We read at least 5 versions of the story and then the kids choose their favorite as a graphing activity. We also do a Venn Diagram about what things are the same and different in the stories. I personally love the Paul Galdone version and the Disney version. I have an old copy of this with the record. This has the song "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?" During this time we also study the non-fiction aspects of pigs. I think March first is (National) Pig Day. We spend about 2 weeks on pigs, books, songs, graphing, writing, etc.

pigs.pdf

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