Food Curriculum, Day Ten

All right! Sadly, today is the last day of my food unit….it’s time to move on to Thanksgiving (of course, there’s a fair amount of cooking involved in the food theme)! Today is likely to be your students’ favorite day of the theme-pizza day! Naturally, you will set your theme at story time by reading Hi, Pizza Man! and singing “Do You Know the Pizza Man” and “I am a Pizza” (if you have it-and believe me-you SHOULD have it!).

Of course, your cooking activity is going to be to make pizza! You could make a large pizza for your whole class to share, but I feel like it’s more of a crowd-pleaser to let everyone make their own pizza. I like English muffins, but if you are feeling especially daring, your could buy some pizza dough at the grocery store, or even make it from scratch (a bread machine is great for doing this without a lot of fuss). Whatever you choose, let the students help you put out the ingredients in paper bowls, then let them build their own pizzas. I find that the most popular toppings are pretty obvious-cheese and pepperoni-but there are always some students that surprise you by eating olives, peppers, or mushrooms. At any rate, provide them so that your students have that option! Also, provide Boardmaker pictures so that they can request whatever they want for their pizza. The best way that I have found to identify each child’s cooking is to cut out a square of waxed or parchment paper in the size of whatever they are making, write each child’s name on a square, and then make sure they put their treat on their square. Perfect!

You could also order a pizza to be delivered-so your students can practice saying, “Hi, pizza man!” of course-but the one year that I tried to do this I spent $10.00 on Pizza Hut pizza only to have my students stare blankly at the pizza man and then have only one student eat the pizza. I mean, I know kids with autism tend to be picky eaters, but I thought everyone liked Pizza Hut pizza!!!! My point is, I wouldn’t spend my money on this unless I was certain the children were going to eat it!

For math today, of course you are going to vote on which food your students have liked best-muffins, chocolate chip cookies, pancakes, vegetable soup, or pizza! I hope that you have enjoyed my favorite EVER theme. I hate that it’s over! I’ll have to think of some more ideas to add to it!