STEM Our Learning of Fables

Before my littles left for summer break, we spent a month on fables, with a focus on one each week. Now since this unit coincided with the last month of school, I didn't snap as many pics as I would have hoped.  These little units made for some fun enrichment, cooperative learning and a break from our normal routine, which allowed me to also finish up end of the year assessments.

Our first fable was The Three Little Pigs.  There is so much you can do with this fable and my littles never wanted the fun to end.  Let me start by saying one thing I loved about this unit was the many different versions of each book.  This makes for such fun retelling!  To work on retelling, we built the setting of The Three Little Pigs.

The sets were used to retell the story.  We used masks that I made from poster board and some masks from Lakeshore that I received through Donors Choose.

Here is a small video of some of my litttles retelling.

The Big Bad Wolf had a day of fun with us as well.  We huffed and puffed life the Big Bad Wolf with some wolf straws.  My cuties drew a house on paper and then attached a straw to a wolf face and blew water droplets on the house.

You can grab the wolf faces and labels by clicking the pic below.

For a fun STEM challenge, we built houses to protect our pigs.  We even wore construction hats!

Our pigs were from this pack of counters from Lakeshore.

Then the Big Bad Wolf (my blow dryer) came to try and blow down the houses.  I asked the littles to test their houses before the Big Bad Wolf came, so they all blew on them and fixed things as needed.  When the Wolf showed up, all of the houses stood!  My littles learned it's important to test and rethink our work sometimes to make it better.

We had lots of little social learning activities, too, such as building brick houses with wooden blocks and a simple play dough recipe for mortar.  They loved spreading the "mortar" on the "bricks" and building houses.

Another social learning activity we did was inspired by this math lesson about surveys and graphs and this book:

My littles loved to survey their friends around the room about who's story they believed - the wolf or the pigs.  This video is pretty cute of their surveys!

Another fable we studied was The Three Billy Goats Gruff.

We created our own trolls with a collage of materials.  Thankfully, trolls can look however you want them to look - they're trolls.

We also  created bridges for the goats to cross over the river in partner groups for a little STEM project.  We used the goats from the same pack of farm animal counters from Lakeshore.

Our last fable was Goldilocks and the Three Bears.  I did not get pics at all because this was the next to the last week and we had so many things to finish up and graduation to prepare for, so, alas, this is my only pic of a project we did for beginning, middle, and end.  They turned out pretty cute and my littles loved making their own Goldilocks and 3 Bears however they wanted to for this project.

Have a great rest of your summer!  I am about to tackle this little book for fun...

Three Little Pigs

Last week was a fabulous week of fairy tale fun with The Three Little Pigs.  We started the week with  by creating the 3 pigs' houses.

We made the straw house by gluing on hay that was leftover from our fall pumpkin patch that we made in our dramatic play center.  The stick house was made with the sticks that we gathered outside at recess, and the brick house was made with dipping sponges into red paint and stamping them like bricks.

We also created pig masks out of egg cartons that we cut into pieces.  My little cuties painted them pink and added a snout, eyes, and ears.  How cute is little Christopher?!!!

One of our science lessons this week was about forces and that air is a force.  We each got wolf straws that I made with wolf clip art attached to a straw.  With the straws we experimented to see which building material blows away the easiest.  We huffed and puffed our way into learning about forces.

(Do you see me in my silly wolf mask?)

After we did the experiment, we all got a sheet of paper and huffed and puffed to blow paint.

If you would like the wolf picture and labels for the paint blowing, click the image below.

For math we have bee practicing number 15, so I created this little pig activity.  We created 15 pigs from white sticker dots that I grabbed from Dollar Tree.  After each pig was made it was place in a pen on the paper. 

It's simple, but we are pre-k and this helped with directions, fine motor, and counting.  Click below to grab it.

In our centers we had sensory fun with crinkled straw and pigs, houses, and a wolf.  I loved listening to my cuties say "little pig, little pig, let me in!"  It was so precious to see them acting out the story together.

 In puppets center we had little pigs who kept saying, "not by the hair of my chinny chin chin".

In the painting center there was pink paint, and scrap paper.  My cuties used the materials to paint pigs and add details to their pigs.  (Don't you love the label?!!)

In art center, I added houses and materials to decorate the houses.  Look at what was created!  I don't give them instructions on what to do for free choice centers.  I just add it to the center and see what they create.  I am so proud of their progress this year!  Sprinkles to pre-k!