Curriculum - The 3 Little Pigs (pre-school and elementary level)

The storybook that’s setting on your shelf is a curriculum waiting to come alive!  Turn the story’s setting—village, town, hamlet etc.—into a 3-D simulation. Your child can build structures, and be motivated to learn new words while becoming enamored with some of his favorite characters. Let your little one use his imagination to expand his favorite scenes or change the story’s end.

SCIENCE
Use a large sheet of cardboard (a 20-by 30-inch or 32-by-40 inch piece) to make a topological map. Using a marker, section off the map into geographical areas, such as a residential neighborhood, business district or recreational site. Name the streets to reflect the storyline.  For example, if you select the Three Little Pigs, you may want to name the streets Straw Avenue, Stick Blvd., Brick Lane or Wolf Way. Add mountains by taking the cups out of egg cartons and placing them a round the edge of the village. For a seaside village, use salt to represent the beach.

ART
For the buildings, use small, corrugated boxes or milk cartons covered with construction paper. Paste pictures of windows and doors, cut from old magazines, to make openings, or let your child draw the windows and doors using a marker or crayons.

MATHEMATICS
In the business district, create retail spaces or grocery stores that relate to the theme of the story. Using the Three Little Pigs, for example, you may include a store that sells bricks. Let your child decide what types of items he wants to sell and help him price them. Then, using a cash register with real or play money let him pretend to purchase the items. This will give him opportunity to practice adding, subtracting and multiplying.

MOTOR SKILLS
If your child needs to transport goods, let him become the truck by crawling on his hands and knees. He can transport the cargo on his back.

LANGUAGE ARTS
Before reading the book, let your child do a “picture survey” and describe what he sees. Record his ideas on sticky notes and attach them to each page. After you read the story to him, discuss his recorded ideas. Ask your child to retell the story using his own words.

CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT
Throughout the story, the characters’ feelings will change. Encourage your child to identify each character’s feelings, and you can write each feeling—like happy, sad, friendly, or scared—on a card.  Put the cards in a box. Mix them up. Now your child should select a card and act out the feeling using both his body and face. Then, try to guess the feeling that your child is portraying.  Engage your child in a discussion about the importance of expressing how he feels and learning to read someone’s feelings so he can respond appropriately.



SOURCES
Curriculum Expansion Ideas