Pizza!

Back to school and back to blogging! It always takes me a few weeks to 're-calibrate' as I leave summer vacation behind.

Everyone loves pizza and there are loads of activities to do with a pizza unit. Pictured above are 2 of my favorites. One is a math pizza puzzle - the kids assemble it as they make responses. It is such a simple thing, but kids love it! The other activity, Pizza Plate, works well for language or artic responses. I cut out rough - very rough, one might even say abstract - representations of pizza toppings from construction paper. Then I have the kids use red and brown crayons to put "sauce" and "crust" on the "dough". Then they request and glue various toppings. I also have a rolling pin they use to flatten the paper plate (roll the dough) before coloring.

I always like to have some literature tie-in and depending on the age of my group, I use one of the following books:


Pete's a Pizza by William Steig This is especially good for preK because they love to be 'rolled' like Pete.

The Little Red Hen (Makes a Pizza)by
Philemon Sturges

Curious George and the Pizza

Finally, I love to make little English muffin pizzas with my special ed preK class. We have a toaster oven in the class and I just use English muffins, sauce and preshredded mozzarella cheese. I have a Tech Talk set up for requesting ingredients.

If you have any other great pizza ideas, please leave a comment!

Maisy Makes Lemonade...and so can you!

Last Friday's SpEd PreK show was all about lemonade. First we read "Maisy Makes Lemonade" by Lucy Cousins. Maisy books are some of my favorites for basic language stuff.

After the book, the kiddies answered 'wh' questions using the TechTalk. Love that thing. Here is a scan of the template I used. It is significantly doctored up so no Boardmaker file for ya to download.

I do have BM files of the icons I used for a sequence activity and wh/pasting activity (in B&W and color),and a big Natural Aided Language Board (NALB). You will need Boardmaker - an expensive, but highly useful bit of software - in order to open these files. Here is the Word doc that goes with the cut-n-paste. Basically, for this activity, you ask things like "Today we made..?" and they choose a picture of "lemonade" or "coffee" (for example). Please let me know if any of these clickable downloads don't work for you.

Then we mosey on over to the table to whip up a batch of lemonade. First we examine and talk about the lemon. If I have a large group, we use bottled lemon juice, but for just a coupla kids we can actually squeeze the actual lemon. Then, using a handy-dandy child safety knife, we all take a few hacks at the lemon until it is open. Then, get your cameras ready, the bravest among them have a taste of the lemon juice. I quickly teach the word 'sour'. Then they all have a taste of sugar. This sometimes backfires as the tasters are occasionally afraid to drink the lemonade they made, fearing a repeat of the 'sour' experience. I have a tiny whisk for stirring. Sometimes I bring some red food coloring so we can make pink lemonade.



I also do this activity with my older students. It's a nice break from drill drill drill.