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If you are teaching early years children about danger and making plans to stay safe then at one time or another you may be examining the story of The Three Little Pigs and specifically the consequences of over-confidence. This story is useful for introducing materials and their use in building resilient structures. You will need comprehensive foundation stage resources, material about issues of personal safety as well as the very best teaching resources looking specifically at the story of The Three Little Pigs.

Among traditional fairy tales, the story of The Three Little Pigs combines the moral lessons of the benefits of getting on well with others and behaving decently with useful lessons about materials and structures. The down sides of less than desirable behaviour run alongside the downsides of building less than rugged domestic abodes. The passage of time has seen The Three Little Pigs re-told in a number of different ways and depending on the age of the children engaging with the texts the children can compare and contrast the different versions of the tale. For children looking for an exercise in creative writing the creation of further different versions makes for a useful exercise. For children in need of an additional challenge the creative exercise of re-authoring the tale from a different character’s perspective can be invaluable.

On occasions children will be looking at pigs in general and The Three Little Pigs makes an ideal backdrop. The teaching of technology and structures through the story creates first class links for technical skills. One option would be for the children to make their own houses out of sticks, wood, straw and also using bricks whether made out of clay or construction bricks such as Lego or Duplo. 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 to engage children straight away then try The Three Little Pigs as it offers numerous options for covering objectives for speaking and listening. For children from about 3 to 6 years old this is an ideal story. 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. To help children re-tell the tale in discrete groups it is helpful to have props such as a supply of puppets and interactive objects available.

Children could have access to masks and act out the story outdoors or in the role-play area. Young children are usually eager to carry out this kind of activity independently, without adult intervention. Letting children re-tell stories using props is a most worthwhile activity as it helps build self-confidence, develop story-telling skills and bolsters group social skills. For added excitement, the story may be recorded, filmed or in some other way presented to the remainder of the class.

There are in addition a useful variety of creative activities that can be run alongside The Three Little Pigs. Among the many artistic creations that can be created, children can use a computer program to create pictures of pigs, paint pigs and create mobiles that hang from the ceiling. Once displayed the classroom will look lively, colourful and every child can have their work on show. 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. The children can learn about different farm animals and a visit to a farm would be ideal to give children first hand experience. Many generations have enjoyed the timeless tale of The Three Little Pigs and it remains a popular tale to this day.