The Three Little Pigs In The Classroom
Posted October 20th, 2011 by adminIf you are educating children about things that are dangerous and forward thinking then at some point you may be taking a look at the tale of The Three Little Pigs and specifically being careful who you trust. This story is useful for introducing materials and how they may be used for fabricating strong buildings. You will need comprehensive key stage 1 resources, information about when it is safe to trust other people as well as first rate teaching resources focussed on 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 with due regard to the age of the children studying the story the different versions of the tale can form the basis of a comparing and contrasting exercise. 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.
For children researching pigs as a topic, The Three Little Pigs makes for an ideal backdrop. Tales such as these with such a focus on materials and their properties are an excellent link for technical skills. One option would be for the children to make their own houses out of sticks, wood, straw and bricks whether moulded from such diverse materials as construction bricks of Lego or Duplo or maybe even clay. They can 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 taught the idea of fair testing in this way.
If you want a wonderful book that engages children from the outset then The Three Little Pigs is ideal and further more it provides many opportunities to tackle objectives for speaking and listening. This is a particularly favoured story for children from around the age range of three to six years old. Having had the story of The Three Little Pigs read to them a number of times, the children should achieve sufficient familiarity with the text to re-tell it themselves. Children benefit from the availability of interactive objects related to the story and also puppets so that they can re-tell the story in differentiated groups using the available props.
Children can re-enact the story in the role-play area or outside if they have access to a supply of masks. Being allowed to perform this kind of activity on their own without the supervision of adults is particularly popular with young children. 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 paint pigs, use a computer program to create pictures of pigs, create mobiles that hang from the ceiling and many more artistic creations. All of the artistic creations will make for a lively classroom full of colour and each child will be able to have their work on display. Children can learn the phonetic sound of the letter p and create words that rhyme with the word pig.
There are many other stories about pigs and numerous non-fiction books are also available. 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 remains a very popular story that has been told and read through many generations.