The Three Little Pigs Come To Life!

I've had this post floating around in my head for a long time! I have always loved fairy tales. They are just magical. I love the absurdity and whimsy. One of my favorites is "The Three Little Pigs". There are so many versions of this story and it's great fun to read them all. This post shows how we brought "The Three Little Pigs" to life and combined the story with science and math!

Last summer, my kids and some of their friends wanted to make a movie. At the time, I was preparing to present at a preschool conference and had all my fairy tale fun spread out in the craft room. The kids saw the three little pigs and the wolf and inspiration hit! They wanted to bring "The Three Little Pigs" to life.

I collected a bunch of milk cartons to make the little pig's houses, so the kids got busy creating. All the houses were very easy to make. We glued pieces of straw to the straw house, we actually used brown paper cut like sticks (you can substitute real sticks) for the stick house, and scrapbook paper that looked like bricks for the house of bricks.

The houses were really cute, but I wanted to bring in science. We talked about the various materials and the weight of each material. The kids went outside to collect straw (we used grass), sticks, and bricks (stones). We brought all the materials inside. They filled up each house with the same type of materials. Then, we compared the different weights by placing them on the scale.

After we had all of our houses ready, we broke out the very adorable Three Little Pig's set from Melissa and Doug. They matched the pigs to the houses and got busy working on their script!

 I forgot to mention the best part of this activity! Break out your hair dryer. It makes the reenactment irresistible. I velcroed the Big Bad Wolf to the top of my hair dryer. Then, he can actually "blow" down the houses.

 So. Much. Fun.

They did end up making their video, but before that we had a great time blowing down the different houses. The straw house was out of there in an instant! 

 The stick house took a little more effort.

And the brick house could not be blown down! It was great for discussing the strength and impact of wind on different types of structures. We ended up discussing tornadoes and how they can impact our world.

We had a great time engaging with the fairy tale, looking at the science behind it, and creating our own movie!

It was a really fun activity and I can see parts of it enhancing a unit on the "Three Little Pigs". 

I am in the process of creating a "Grab & GO" set on fairy tales. They are great for writing centers, word walls, use in large group writing activities, identifying and categorizing thematic words, comparing and contrasting elements of fairy tales, and so much more! 

This set isn't quite done, but you can see all my other Grab & Go sets here! Thanks for stopping by and I hope you found some fun ideas to use with your kids, too!