Pizza Party Smarties

I am lucky enough to have the summer opportunity of being a nanny/tutor for two little girls ages 4 and 6.  They are super smart and my job is to prepare them for preK and 1st grade while making sure they have an entertaining summer break.  We do lessons that are fun and creative while incorporating reading, writing, and math in a low intensity environment.  Call me crazy, but the extra income and experience has actually been great!  We have different themes that we are covering throughout the summer including cooking, plants, animals, and Spanish fluency vocab.(colors, numbers, food, and farm animals).  I wanted to share the pizza/cooking activity we did last week because it turned out super cute! 

These girls love music.  (They are both learning the ukulele and piano.)  We have a music time everyday.  This week I started the day with this song about pizza (click the link to hear) You Tube "I am a Pizza" Song , and built a lesson from there.  

We discussed cheese, vegetables, and other pizza toppings that we all love and acted out making a pizza with hand and arm movements.  Next it was time to build our pizza with construction paper materials.  I had a variety of paper toppings including mushrooms, cheese, pepperoni, and peppers.  They rolled, folded, and glued the crust into place and then chose the ingredients they wanted for their own pizza.

Next, we added a writing and drawing element to our lesson.  We did a guided drawing of their pizzas (I only guided the shape of the toppings).  They were to draw the pizza they created and then write a sentence about it.  [Remember they are sisters so of course there is a little competition among them, as you can see from the sentence choice below, lol.]

The last thing we did on our pizza/cooking adventure was a sequencing activity to plan our recipe. We brainstormed and listed everything we would need for the recipe.  Then we wrote the steps in order and included which materials we would need for each step. Lastly we mixed, rolled, spread, sprinkled, and placed each ingredient to make and bake a deliciously messy, handmade, kid-created pizza! 

I am lucky to have a little more freedom when planning activities this summer, but I'm sure this could be extended and modified to be classroom friendly using playdoh and/or other supplies.  This same idea could also be used with cupcakes, sundaes, or some type of healthy meal.