The Three Little Pigs

We read The Three Little Pigs this week in class. This was our third week of fairy tales and we focused on books with threes. Goldilocks and the Three Bears, The Three Little Billy Goats Gruff, and The Three Little Pigs. I chose The Three Little Pigs for our repeated reading, because it is repetitive and the kids love chiming in with this book. I made felt pieces to go along with the story. They were surprisingly cheap and easy to make. I plan on making more of my own felt sets in the future.

I did realize that I forgot to put eyebrows on two of the little pigs . . . after I'd taken this picture. I free handed all the drawings (and I'm not very gifted in the drawing department) so the pigs are twice the size of the wolf. I guess I should call my story The Three Big Pigs and the Little Bad Wolf.

I brought out the felt pieces on Wednesday. (The third day we read the book.) By this time, the kids had the story pretty well memorized. We used the pieces first as a large group, then I left them out in the library center for the students to use independently during choice time. While modeling how to use the felt board, I told the story from memory. I emphasized that I didn't tell the story word for word. I just told what I remembered from the story. Felt boards are a great way to encourage students to retell stories. 

I bought a number of fairy tales on amazon.com for our unit. All of them were the Brighter Child Keepsake Story versions. I was really impressed with how well they made the stories age appropriate. The stories are shorter than most versions I've seen, which keep the attention of my students, but still include all the important parts of the story. The stories also include very rich vocabulary.