National Pig Week

to Read (

Words)

National Pig Week takes place from the 1st March annually.

I have actually seen a very few clever settings tie Pig Week in with Picnic Week (which is throughout June) and combining the themes to create 'Pignic Week'. They celebrate Pignic Week sometime between March and June when they have a bout of decent weather.

Did you know that there are around 2 billion pigs in the world? They are intelligent animals and have an excellent sesnse of smell. They use their snouts to dig into the ground and sniff out food.

Just like humans, pigs are mammals and omnivores as they eat both plants and other animals.

A female pig is called a sow, a baby pig is called a piglet, a male pig is called a boar and a group of pigs together is called a herd. Believe it or not, pigs are very clean animals. On average pigs live up to the age of 15.

The children have been very busy with Sue Baxter learning all about pigs. As usual Sue has set up some wonderful learning opportunities for the children to enjoy....

The mud mat was created by adding corn flour, cocoa powder and water inside a laminated pouch. You can see how to make these by seeing the Sensory Bags we made, as they use the same process. Children were able to pop the pigs in the mud and feel the 'mud' moving around beneath their hands. Children were excitedly saying how cold it felt and how they could hear it swishing around.

I created some curly pig tails using pipe cleaners and the children used tape measures to measure how long they were. They enjoyed making their own tails too by wrapping the pipe cleaner around a pencil. Great for fine motor control!
You can also use this technique on a stick to create your very own caterpillars.

We had various print outs which I had made personally online and laminated. Its always fun to add lots of relevant words to play set ups. The children really do pay an interest in them and its great observing them making plausible attempts to sound out words, or making guesses on what the words could be by recognising their initial sounds.

I laminated together a set of paint samples that I picked up from a DIY store. We spoke about different shades of pink and they selected what colour pink they would like to be if they were a pig!

It wouldn't be pig week without abit of messy mud fun would it? We took to using the little piggies to create dirty pig pictures that were covered in mud.

The books I included in this set up included -
Push me Higher!
Ten Clean Pigs
10 Dirty Pigs

Other stories you could include are:
The Three Little Pigs

I added a section for children to explore what pigs like to eat, using print outs from the internet and play food from the play kitchen! We included grass pellets and corn.
The pig at the top of the tuff tray is a hand puppet which has been great fun during story time.

Have you celebrated pig week with the children before? Have you shared with the children lots of pig related stories, sensory mud play and learning through play? I would love to hear from you if you have been busy learning about pigs! Its ties in great with the Farm Topic too!

A HUGE Thank you to Sue Baxter for sharing another wonderful set of activities!