File folder preschool

Ever since K. saw the production the older children did of the Three Little Pigs, it has become his favorite story.  He keeps telling me, "B. said knock, knock."  So I ask if he replied, "Who's there?" 

"No, he said it to M. and A."

"Oh, did they say knock, knock"

"No, they said, chinny-chin-chin."

At which point the light bulb goes on and I realize what he's talking about.  In my defense, K. recently figured out the form of knock knock jokes and has been making up his own.  I thought it was just a new knock knock joke with a punch line of chinny-chin-chin.

Anyway, I decided to put this to use.  I always wonder how much language comprehension he actually has, so I've been doing various activities to reinforce what he is hearing.  Today I made a tag board set of

Three Little Pig figures:  3 pigs, 1 wolf, a straw house, a stick house, a brick house, a pile of straw, a pile of sticks, and a pile of bricks, and one cooking pot over a fire.  Then on a file folder a made a generic background scene for the pigs to build their houses in.  I tell the story and K. uses the figures to act it out.  He also can tell me the story while he moves the figures as well.  Maybe tomorrow I'll change the story a bit and see if he notices.

Here he is using the figures:

The three pigs fit underneath the houses to make it more fun when the wolf blows the house away... K. likes it when the pig suddenly appears.

Actually, K. just liked the whole idea.  It was a big enough hit that I will probably do this with other folk stories.

To store it I labelled an enclosed folder with the title and the background and figures fit neatly inside.  It would be fun to create an entire binder (Oh, how I love binders!) of story figures each in their own folder.