Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs!

Hi There!

Who wants some sketti and meatballs?

Each spring I teach an assigned weather unit to my students.  It is by far my favorite science unit to teach but I felt I needed to "SPICE IT UP" a little bit.  So I "cooked up" a new unit introduction.  On my menu were activities that included: a fun anchor chart / word bank, a yummy art and writing  project, literature and and a lesson on alliteration.

Whew! Time to get out of the kitchen!  The kids had a meatBALL!  So  here is their recipe for some classroom fun!~

1.  We brainstormed all the words that we knew that go with eating a delicious bowl of steaming spaghetti.  We heaped all the students' great ideas onto an anchor chart. Then we uses a meatball pointer to read all those juicy words.

2.  I ran home on my lunch hour and boiled us up some spaghetti to eat and to use in a sticky art project (thank goodness I work and live in the same small town!).  If you try this art project in your own classroom buy the cheapest, carb-i-est pasta you can find.  Don't rinse it because the starch will form a great paste! ICK!
 
We made these cute little spaghetti loving people and the kiddos wrote about how they dig into a bowl of spaghetti using lots of signal words at the beginning of the sentences.  We added a fork in the hand, a real napkin, and some real spaghetti hence using the sticky, cheap, starchy, brand.  We let the mess dry over night and then we painted the pasta and forks with red paint.

3. We also read, and sang and giggled our way through the book, On Top of Spaghetti by Paul Brett Johnson.  We found instances of illiteration in the book and the made our own rendition of the song (full of lots examples of illiteration of course)!

Next week right before SPRING BREAK (Hooray!!!) We'll relax with a movie ~ Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs!
Enjoy the spring weather everybody. Carry an umbrella and watch out for meatball sized hail!

Until next time.....