For a few weeks now, the kids and I have been working on building houses for the 3 little pigs. We painted, glued, adhered things, glued, etc. It has taken a while, but at last we have come to a completion....
If you would like to create these adorable homes for your own little piggies, here is how we did it.
First, you need to gather supplies:
*Paint Brushes
*Yellow, Brown, White, Black Paint
*Wax paper to prevent messes on table (live and learn :)
*Boxes for homes (We used pasta boxes for 2 of them because they came with windows)
*Straw for straw house (if you don't have any, cut up yellow paper into thin strips)
*Baby sticks (this is what Makenna called them when we went out to gather little twigs)
*Red paper (we used card stock and cut it into 1 and 1 1/2 inch rectangles)
*Glue
*Once they are dry, cut out windows and doors (Be sure to do this before you glue down supplies, or it will be more difficult.)
*Sqiggle glue around and drop hay on for a messy approach
*(or, for a neater approach, line it up neatly.)
*Once one side is dry, move to other sides of the house.
*Do additional layers to make it covered in straw.
The stick house took the most time as it required lots of trimming of the "baby sticks". This is the house that I did, and it was a long process.
You can go for a less together approach by swirling glue around, and dropping the twigs on. Doing this would go along better with the 3 pigs story because the first 2 brothers were lazy. :)
*Glue down bricks.
*Stagger a little to make it look more like a brick house if you wish.
The finished pieces:
I had been racking my brain over what I wanted to make the characters out of, but after long debate, I landed on this idea, to paint the characters on rocks (the ultimate durability and FREE!). I painted them with acrylic paint and then put a few layers of mod podge on top to seal the deal. These guys will last through many play sessions. Makenna has already given me a list of several more characters she wants me to make for her :)
For the finalizing of the brick house, we added a chimney out of a small box, painted the chimney and door black, them added a little smoke coming out of the chimney by using cotton.
The end result:
The kids LOVED this project! They enjoyed painting, gluing, and now playing with the houses and the pigs.
I'm glad we are now done. This doesn't have to take a long time, but well, I was lazy for a while there.
I will be happy to get them and all of my supplies off of my table! Now I need to put up a few shelves in the toy room for displaying their cute little creations :)
* This is another idea I stole from Alexs' teacher. They studied the 3 little pigs in class and then built their houses. Alex opted out of this to play with the blocks, so I of course had to make it a home project. They didn't make any of the characters though.