The Three Little Pigs

Here's a quick little project to do with your kids sometime! Read or tell the story of the three little pigs. A fun online version can be found HERE.

Then make the three houses! We used spaghetti noodles for the straw (yarn or actual straw would work, too), craft sticks for the sticks (toothpicks would work great; just watch out for the pointy ends!), and red paper rectangles for the bricks. For hanging, we attached all three houses to a piece of yarn.

If you'd like a pattern for the houses, click HERE.

It's also fun to make the houses in 3D--use yarn or straw (or noodles) for the straw house, get some sticks outside for the stick house, and use Legos or some sort of building block for the brick house. Then have the kids try to blow each one down! They have a lot of fun trying to "be" the wolf! (Incidentally, you can also make a wolf out of a hair dryer--cover the barrel part with brown or gray paper for the wolf's muzzle, and cut out a face with a hole in the middle to slide onto the barrel...and voila! You have a wolf that can actually huff and puff!)

If you'd like some patterning practice for little ones, here's a fun little sheet. Since we did this with a group of five, the second sheet has five cutouts for the "answers"--in case you're wondering why there are so many! :) (Since the preview on the download link isn't showing properly, here's what the sheets look like):

Shape Books

In addition to our church group, I also help with a home-rotating preschool. On St. Patrick's day, our little guys (2-3 years old) made these fun shape books. They love being able to see their names on the title pages.

The text is predictable, so they can "read" their books to everyone! They enjoyed being able to put the appropriate number of shamrocks on each page (we did numbers 1-5).

This is a great project for any holiday, or any other time of the year! Pick a shape or a theme, and run with it! Kids love having ownership, and they love to show off a book that they've made.

To download a copy of the templates we used for this book, go HERE. Thanks to http://www.abcteach.com/ for the shamrock shape!

Peek-a-Boo Books

Last spring we made "peek-a-boo" books. I did a religious one and a secular one (thanks to my sister for helping me put the samples together!). They're a lot of fun and are very adaptable: text or no text, large "windows" or small, simple pictures or complex, themed or non-themed, etc. You can use old magazines, calendars, etc. for pictures. Here are a couple of scans from that project:

The ABCs of Christmas

We saved our Christmas cards through this last Christmas season in order to use them for these great books entitled, "The ABCs of Christmas." My aunt made one for my family growing up, and my mother saved her Christmas cards and made one for my little family a couple of years ago. We love it! You can see in the picture above the one my mother made and then the one that my daughter is in process of making. We need a few more pictures, and then we'll be able to laminate and bind!

These are a couple of pages from my mom's so you can see examples--so cute!

Here is the full text and some title text, for a cover, if desired:

You can download a file of the text in book layout HERE, if you're ready to put one together! We printed our pages on white cardstock.