The Three Little Pigs 🐷🐷🐷, Adding (Subtracting) with the Bricks 🏠

Who doesn’t know the story of the three little pigs and the big bad wolf? The wolf couldn’t eat the pigs because of the house of bricks, even after doing all the ‘huff and puff’. The story does not end there! 😇 The other two pigs also decide to build the houses using strong bricks. And while doing that they count and add the bricks. 

But, as the wolf gets this news, he comes back with a very powerful blower to break the bricks. Can the pigs build the houses with the remaining bricks? Let’s find out using this pretend-play story.

Main Plot and Enacting the Story:

(The printable pdf is available here for the subscribers.)

• When the first two pigs decide to build the bricks houses, the third little pig says that they have less bricks as compared to what he used. So, the first two pigs add all their bricks. The story can stop here or a number can be given to the third little pig so that it can compared with the answer.

• The bricks numbers are such that the kids learn to add the double digit numbers with and without regrouping. Small blocks, as shown in the figure, are great for visualizing addition with grouping for early learners. The single blocks represent ones and the towers represent tens. In the story, blocks may represent the bricks!

• Similarly, when the wolf arrives with his powerful blower, we can take away the blocks that need to be subtracted. Here too, breaking the towers helps in understanding 'subtraction with regrouping' when you have too few single blocks. 😀 
  

• The pigs are fast enough, so they build one house (instead of two) with the remaining bricks and the wolf is not able to break all the bricks 😃🏠