Pizza Storytime

This week's storytime was all about everyone's favorite food:  Pizza!  We started out by talking about what toppings we liked on our pizza.  I asked the kids to raise their hands if they liked a certain kind of topping to keep everyone from trying to talk at once, and this voting format worked really well.  Just about everyone agreed that cheese, pepperoni, and sausage were delicious, but we also talked about other toppings like olives and pineapple.  It was interesting to see what the kids thought of these toppings! 

As we read stories and did out other activities, I constantly was asking the kids about the steps that one has to go through to make a pizza.  One of the major goals of this storytime was to focus on this procedure.  What comes first when we make a pizza?  What goes on top of the sauce?  I mentioned to the parents that knowing the order of doing things, such as making a pizza, is very important not only for learning to follow directions, but also for building that important Narration pre-literacy skill.  After all, when we make a pizza we have to go through the steps in the right order or our pizza wouldn't make sense.  The same thing goes for telling a story:  If events aren't told in the right order, then the story won't make sense. 

Here are the books we read:

Pizza at Sally's by Monica Wellington
Sally owns a pizzeria.  Readers get to see how Sally makes the pizza that she serves to her customers.  I like to start with this story because it does a good job of showing the whole process of how a pizza is made in a fairly straightforward manner.  It's also a pretty good jumpstart for talking about how people eat pizza:  Have you ever been to a pizza restaurant?  Have you had a pizza delivered to your house?  At the end of the book there is a recipe that families can use to make a pizza of their own.

Hi, Pizza Man! by Virginia Walter, illustrated by Ponder Goembel
A little girl eagerly awaits for the arrival of the pizza delivery man.  As she waits her mother asks her how she will great him when he arrives.  Of course, the girl will say, "Hi, pizza man!"  But what if it's not a pizza man?  What if it's a pizza woman?  Or a pizza kitty?  Or a pizza dinosaur?  I love that the pictures in this book show all of the animals decked out in their best finery, adding an extra level of silliness to this already silly story.

The Little Red Hen Makes a Pizza by Philemon Sturges, illustrated by Amy Walrod
In the traditional story of The Little Red Hen, an industrious hen bakes a loaf of bread all by herself after her barnyard friends refuse to help.  This version follows the same format, but with pizza instead of bread.  There's also a cute twist at the end where the hen's friends agree to help with the dishes after sharing the pizza that they didn't help to make.  This is a longer story and can be a tough one to end on depending on the crowd's mood so I always have a back-up just in case...

Curious George and the Pizza by H. A. Rey
Curious George and The Man in the Yellow Hat visit a pizza parlor.  George gets into trouble when he tries to help make the pizza, but ends up saving the day in the end. 

We made our own pizza using flannelboard pieces (I made it myself!) and a rhyme that I adapted from a similar rhyme that I discovered on SurLaLune.  With my smaller afternoon storytime group I let each kid come up and place the next part of the pizza on the board so that everyone was involved.  I love having the kids help me with this step when it's possible since it gets them involved and keeps them a little more focused on what we're doing.

  Here is the rhyme that I used for this flannelboard story:

The Pizza That Sally Made

This is the crust that Sally made.

This is the sauce, so spicy and sweet,

That went on the crust that Sally made.

This is the cheese, so gooey and chewy,

That went on the sauce, so spicy and sweet,

That went on the crust that Sally made.

This is the pepperoni, that makes it Italian,

That went with the cheese, so gooey and chewy,

That went on the sauce, so spicy and sweet,

That went on the crust that Sally made.

These are the olives, so black and so salty,

That went with the pepperoni, that makes it Italian,

That went with the cheese, so gooey and chewy,

That went on the sauce, so spicy and sweet,

That went on the crust that Sally made.

These are the peppers, so green and so crunchy,

That went with the olives, so black and so salty,

That went with the pepperoni, that makes it Italian,

That went with the cheese, so gooey and chewy,

That went on the sauce, so spicy and sweet,

That went on the crust that Sally made.

These are the kids, so hungry and lively,

That devoured the pizza,

Made with the peppers, so green and so crunchy,

That went with the olives, so black and so salty,

That went with the pepperoni, that makes it Italian,

That went with the cheese, so gooey and chewy,

That went on the sauce, so spicy and sweet,

That went on the crust that Sally made.

And that was the pizza that Sally made.

We also did an adapted version of the classic rhyme "Pat-A-Cake" that involved making a pizza, which I also found on SurLaLune's Storytime page.

To finish off our storytime we did a craft:  Paper Plate Pizzas!  This craft would allow the kids to make their own paper pizzas to take home and would reinforce the importance of doing all of the pizza-making steps in the right order.

The kids were each given a paper plate that would serve as the pizza crust.  They could use a red marker to draw sauce on top of their crust.  They were each also given  a baggie with the other pizza toppings:  Strips of yellow crepe paper for the cheese, and simple colored circles and rectangles to represent pepperoni, olives, ham, and green peppers.  All of these toppings just needed to be glued on top with a glue stick - cheese first, of course!

Yes, I could have made this craft a little easier by using fewer toppings.  But even though many kids stick to simple pepperoni or plain cheese when they eat pizza, I think it's good just to remind kids that there are lots of other good topping choices out there.  Besides, the pizza is a lot more colorful with more different kinds of toppings!