If you are educating young children about how to stay safe and forward planning then at some point you may be taking a look at the story of The Three Little Pigs and in particular issues of trust. This story provides a good starting point for introducing the subject of materials and how they relate to constructing reliable buildings. You will need comprehensive key stage 1 resources, material about issues of personal safety as well as first rate teaching resources looking specifically at the story of The Three Little Pigs.
The Three Little Pigs is a traditional fairy tale. The story is excellent for teaching about materials and structures. It also offers opportunities to discuss bad behaviour and how those who are kind and friendly get on much better. There are several different versions of The Three Little Pigs and depending on the age of the children engaging with the texts the children can compare and contrast the different versions of the tale. Just as the story has evolved into an several different versions of its own accord, children can enjoy a creative writing challenge by creating their own different versions. Writing the story from a different character’s perspective can be a useful additional exercise in creative writing for children in need of a further challenge.
On occasions children will be looking at pigs in general and The Three Little Pigs makes an ideal backdrop. Tales such as these with such a focus on materials and their properties are an excellent link for technical skills. The children can create houses of sticks, wood, straw and bricks whether made from clay or construction bricks such as Lego or Duplo. They are able to be taught the design, build, test and evaluation sequence. The blowing of the wolf can be simulated with a fan or a hair dryer and children can be introduced to the practice of fair testing in this manner.
The Three Little Pigs is a wonderful book that engages children straight away and offers many opportunities to cover objectives for speaking and listening. If you need a story that is ideal for three to six year olds then this fits the bill perfectly. After having had The Three Little Pigs read to them a number of times, the children should achieve sufficient familiarity with the tale to be able to re-tell it by themselves. It is good practice to have available puppets and interactive objects related to the story so that the children can re-tell the tale using the story props in discrete groups.
Children can re-enact the story in the role-play area or outside if they have access to a supply of masks. It is particularly popular with young children to be allowed to perform this kind of activity on their own without the supervision of adults. Permitting children to re-tell stories with story props helps to develop their story telling skills, builds their confidence and develops the social abilities of working in a small group. Making a presentation to the remainder of the class, filming or otherwise recording the story can add substantially to the excitement.
There are various creative activities that can be carried out with young children related to The Three Little Pigs. Children can engage in the production of artistic creations such as painting pictures of pigs, creating pictures of pigs using computer graphics programs and even create mobiles to hang from the ceiling. The end result will be a vibrant and bright classroom where every single child will be able to have their own work on show. Children can create words that rhyme with the word pig and learn the phonetic sound of the letter p.
Numerous non-fiction books are available and there are also many other stories about pigs. A visit to a farm would be ideal to give children first hand experience of farm animals and children can learn about pigs in their daily routine. The Three Little Pigs delights generations of children day after day and will continue to do so for many years to come.