“Huffing and Puffing.” We all remember the children’s fairy tale about the three little pigs who each built a house made from different material: straw, wood and bricks. Along comes a big bad wolf that knocks successively on each house, telling the pigs to open the door. The children at Apple Hill Academy love the part where our teacher excitingly asks them to repeat the wolf’s threat: “I’ll huff — and I’ll puff — and I’ll blow your house down!”
Since young children learn best through hands-on activities, we gave them the opportunity to actually handle the materials the pigs used to make their homes. By handling straw, wood and bricks, they learned firsthand why the wolf could not blow down the house made of bricks. We like to think that handling “building materials” will help develop an interest in engineering when the Apple Hill Academy graduates go on to their careers.
