Toddler Activities: Follow the Piggy Game with Printables

 By Deborah Pace Rowley

I just love the book Piggies by Don and Audrey Wood. I created some printable piggy finger puppets you can use after you read the book. Cut out  the finger puppets, laminate them, and tape them together.

Then use the finger puppets to play the simple game of Follow the Piggy. Have your child choose his favorite piggy puppet and put it on his pointer finger. You choose another puppet to put on your pointer finger. 

Lead your child through a short narrated story. Have him copy with his puppet the movements that you make with yours. 

Note: These stories were adapted from an early story time presented by children’s librarian Melissa Depper. You can find it here: http://melissa.depperfamily.net/blog/?p=3668. Thanks Melissa!

Follow the Piggy Stories:

*Your piggy is playing Hide and Seek with his piggy friends. The piggy looks up on top of the hill (move the puppets straight up in the air), down in a tunnel (move the puppet straight down), across a bridge (move puppets left to right), and all around town (move the puppets in a large circle in front of your bodies). He “finds” his friends in a silly place, like on top of your head, or in your ear!

*Your piggy is lost on the farm and can’t find his way home. He looks up in a tree, down in a hole, across a log, and around a pond, before finding his way back to his own muddy pig pen. (Make the muddy pig pen by rolling the puppet around in the palm of your other hand.)

*Your piggy goes to play on the playground: he climbs up the slide and slides down, swings across the monkey bars, he goes over the climbing dome, and rides around and around on a merry-go-round.

*Your piggy is running away from the big, bad wolf. He crawls under the straw house because the wolf has blown it all down, he goes around the stick house, he goes on top of the brick house and down into the chimney. He is finally safe from the big bad wolf!

As you tell these stories, make sure to use the directional language words like up, down, across, and around. Knowing directional words is an important pre-writing skill.  Your child will hear their teachers use these words when they are learning how to move their pencils to write their letters! If they already know what these words mean, they can concentrate on making the marks on the page.

Piggy Printables: Here