The 3 Little Pigs

We continued our experiments with materials today by making the houses belonging to the three little pigs. First I read the story again to the children and we noted that the wolf was able to blow down the houses made from straw and from sticks. We wanted to test if this was true.

Reading the 3 little pigs story

We talked about making the houses of a similar size to make the test fair. I had been unable to track down any straw so we used drinking straws instead. We spoke briefly about their similarities to straw in that they are hollow, lightweight and flexible. We used lolly sticks for the stick house and Duplo bricks for the brick house. We worked as a team to construct the 3 houses for our toy pigs. It was a good opportunity to get Dad involved.

Assembling the sides of the straw house.

The adults cut out the windows that the children had drawn on.

The walls are up, now for the roof.

Adding the finishing touches to the roof

The completed house - with a chimney just like in the story

2 walls completed on the stick house.

Securing the last wall.

The finished stick house

Constructing the brick house

The finished brick house

Next came the really fun part. The wolf had to huff and puff the houses down. We talked about making the test fair and how it would be difficult to keep the puff strength constant if we used our mouth. We decided to try a fan and a hair-dryer instead. The hair dryer worked best. 

Here's a video of the houses being blown down.

We concluded that the book was right and that bricks were the strongest material to make a house from.