Wooden blocks are a staple in our house. They mostly get used to see who can build the tallest tower before Adam knocks it over. We had never used them for a particular learning activity, so I turned a set of them into a Three Little Pigs storytelling set: each block carries a printed character or building from the story, and the whole cast lives in a shoebox small world. Adam retells the story over and over, moving the pigs from house to house and deciding when the wolf turns up. Ages 2 to 5.
What you need:
- A set of plain wooden blocks in mixed sizes. A few small cubes for the pigs and wolf, two small blocks each for the straw and stick houses, and three larger blocks for the brick house.
- A couple of small wooden cylinder blocks for the wolf, so he can be turned to show different poses.
- A free printable Three Little Pigs set with the pigs, the wolf, and the three houses at several sizes. Any size-ordering or story-sequence printable works. Print, then cut the images out.
- Decoupage glue, the kind that goes on white and dries clear and acts as both glue and a sealing topcoat. White school glue watered down works too, but the finish is not as smooth.
- A paintbrush for the glue.
- A shoebox for the small world.
- A printable countryside or storybook backdrop, and a piece of green felt for the grass.
Gluing the characters to the blocks
Printing the images at several sizes first is the part that saves the most time. It means you can match an image to a block you already own instead of trimming a block or resizing a print. Lay your blocks out, then pick the printed image that fits each face.
The gluing is three steps and the kid can help with all of them. Brush a thin layer of decoupage glue onto the block face. Press the printed image down onto the glue and smooth it flat. Brush a second layer of glue over the top of the image and the block. The top layer dries clear and seals the paper so it survives being handled, dropped, and chewed on by a determined two-year-old.
The three pigs and a little fireplace each got their own block. For the wolf I used cylinder blocks so he could be turned to face different ways. I glued a puffing wolf on one side of a cylinder and a running-away wolf on the other, and a creeping wolf on a second cylinder. That way Adam could spin the block to choose which wolf the story needed at each moment, which gave him a small piece of directorial control he took very seriously.
The three houses
The houses are where the size of the blocks does the storytelling for you. For the straw house and the stick house I used two small blocks each. I folded the printed house image in half, cut along the fold, and glued one half to each block so the house could be split apart, the way the wolf splits it apart in the story.
For the brick house I deliberately used a larger image and three bigger blocks. The brick house is meant to be the strong one, the house the wolf cannot blow down, so making it physically bigger and heavier than the other two houses gives a small kid a concrete reason it survives. Adam worked this out without being told, and started using the heavier brick blocks as the safe house every time.
Building a shoebox small world
While the blocks dried I turned a shoebox into a small world for them to live in. In the past I have painted shoeboxes for this, but I did not have time to let paint dry, so I lined the box with a printable countryside backdrop instead. A printed storybook scene across the back and sides, and a piece of green felt cut to fit the base for grass. The blocks stand up on the felt and the backdrop gives the story somewhere to happen.
For another set of storytelling props that work the same way but use painted stones instead of blocks, our Penguin Story Stones turn a handful of pebbles into a story set you can keep in a drawstring bag.
I knew Adam would enjoy the blocks. I had not expected the verdict, delivered the moment he saw them: “this is the best, Mom.” From then on he retold the story over and over, and it is the retelling that makes this worth the afternoon of cutting and gluing. This time last year he could not put three words together. Now he narrates the whole tale, does the wolf’s voice, and decides which house falls and which one holds.
For a quieter follow-up once the blocks are made, our free animal coloring pages set includes pigs, wolves, and other animals to color in alongside the storytelling.
One closing observation. The blocks pack down into a small bag, which makes them a genuine out-of-the-house activity. They have been to two long train journeys and a doctor’s waiting room, and the whole story fits in a sandwich bag. The decoupage seal has held up to all of it; one corner of the straw house has a chew mark and nothing else. Worth the afternoon for a story set that travels and lasts.