Oodles of Foodles
A Food Theme

Introducing the Food Theme

Literature
The Edible Pyramid  Loreen Leedy
Gregory the Terrible Eater   Mitchell Sharmat
Eating the Alphabet   Lois Ehlert
Potluck     Anne Shelby
Today is Monday    Eric Carle
One Hungry Monster    Susan O'Keefe
Alphabite       Charles Reasoner
This is the Way We Eat Our Lunch     Edith Baer
Lunch      Denise Fleming
Monster's Lunch Box    Marc Brown

Activities
Make a Food Pyramid Puzzle ( laminate a poster and cut into puzzle
    pieces)

Make a Colors of Food book  (for example  A banana is yellow.; An apple is red;  I use Print Shop or Print Artist graphics and print them out "coloring book style") I make a book for each child to color and to use for guided reading.

Make a chart of foods and their colors; make a class big book using the chart.

After reading Potluck, Eating the Alphabet and Alphabite,  make a class Food Alphabet Book.

Make individual paper plate books and bind. (1st page: child's face, My name is ___________. 2nd page: My name begins with ____.  3rd page:
I like __________. (a food that begins with the same letter as the child's name.)

Make an Our Potluck Dinner mural using paper plates (Sentence structure:
___________ brought ___________. Name and food begins with the same letter. ex. Sarah brought salad.)

List all foods in Potluck and categorize.

After reading Gregory the Terrible Eater (it is also a Reading Rainbow program #ll), use magazine pictures and make a collage of the foods that Gregory liked. Give each child a a paper plate to take home; ask parents to glue real junk on the plate (coke cans, candy wrappers, etc.) Set up a table in the classroom and label the junk.

Set up a grocery store, pizza parlor or restaurant in the Dramatic Play area, use lots of props for the one you choose, (money, menus, grocery ads, order pads, telephone, play food).

After reading One Hungry Monster, make a list of foods the monsters ate.

Make a food dictionary to place in the Writing Center.

Use food pictures to classify in a variety of ways:
    -foods you eat hot or cold
    -foods you eat for breakfast, lunch, dinner
    -where foods grow (vines, in the ground, trees)
    -foods you can eat raw/cooked
    -foods from animals/not from animals
    -Holiday foods
    -foods you like/don't like

Use lists from the classification activities as writing activities:
We get _____________from trees, vines, etc.
I eat _________ raw and ________ cooked.
My favorite foods for (breakfast, lunch, dinner, snack, etc.) are __________ and _________.

Pasta

Literature
Strega Nona    Tomie de Paola
Strega Nona's Magic Lessons    Tomie de Paola
More Spaghetti, I Say    Rita Gelman
Wednesday is Spaghetti Day    Maryann Cocca-Leffler
Noodles     Sarah Weeks

Activities

Sort and classify pasta in a variety of ways.

Make sets of pasta.

Make pasta patterns.

Read Noodles, bring in various shapes.

Measure Strega Nona, Big Anthony and the pasta pot using wagon wheel
    and shell pasta.

Make pasta pots using task cards. (Make a pasta pot shape from construction paper, make task cards using different shapes of pasta and different amounts) Have students glue pasta onto the pots.

Make pasta task cards to create sets/graphs.

Pizza

Activities
Make a pizza number book.

Use task cards to make a paper plate pizza  (cut out red circles for pepperoni pieces, yellow yarn pieces for cheese, green squiggly pieces for bell pepper, small black circles for olives) Have students color the paper plate to look like a pizza.

Pepperoni Pizza Game - place 20 red circles on a round piece of laminated brown construction paper. Students roll a die and remove circles.

Make a large pizza as an art activity.

Sing "I Wish I Were a __________ Pizza," substituting various pizza toppings.

Use "I Wish I Were a ________ Pizza" as a pocket chart activity.

Make a graph of student's favorite pizza toppings.

Make miniature biscuit pizzas using canned biscuits, tomato sauce, mozzarella cheese, oregano and pepperoni.

Literature
The Best Sandwich Ever      Rita Gelman
The Giant Jam Sandwich    John Vernon Lord
Bread and Jam for Frances  Russell Hoban
Jamberry      Bruce Degan
Peanut Butter Jelly     Natalie Wescott
A Monster Sandwich     Joy Cowley
Growing Vegetable Soup   Lois Ehlert
Mean Soup            Betsy Everitt
Stone Soup     Marcia Brown
Chicken Soup with Rice   Maurice Sendak
The Wolf's Chicken Stew   Keiko Kasza
Monkey Soup     Louis Sachar
Stone Soup       Ann McGovern
Ice Cream Soup    Gail Herman

Activities
Make a class sandwich book. (provide a construction paper bread shape, various colors of construction paper, scissors, glue) On the bottom of "sandwich" _________ made a sandwich of _________, ________, and
__________.

After reading Bread and Jam for Frances; have a bread and jam taste test.
Graph favorite jams/jellies.

Graph peanut butter preferences.

Make sandwiches.

Make a bowl of alphabet soup (use bowl pattern and alphabet noodles)

Make a mural of vegetables growing in the garden.

Make stone soup using a smooth clean stone.

Make a "Favorite Soups" graph.

Read/reread The Wolf's Chicken Stew when celebrating 100 Day.

Read a Chicken Soup with Rice poem each month.
 
 

Literature
Tony's Bread      Tomie de Paola
Walter the Baker   Eric Carle
Bread, Bread, Bread   Ann Morris
The Funny Little Woman      Arlene Mosel
If You Give a Mouse a Cookie     Laura Numeroff
If You Give a Moose a Muffin    Laura Numeroff
If You Give a Pig a Pancake       Laura Numeroff
Gator Pie               Louise Mathews
The Little Red Hen   Lucinda McQueen
Pancakes, Pancakes     Eric Carle
Jake Baked the Cake   B.J. Hennessey
The Missing Tarts       B.J. Hennessey
The Doorbell Rang    Pat Hutchins

Activities
Make an If You Give a Mouse a Cookie storyboard.

Make bread.

After reading Bread, Bread, Bread, bring in various types of bread for students to sample.

Make butter using whipping cream.

Make sets of cookies from salt dough to use to sort, make sets and graph.

Read and compare/contrast different versions of The Little Red Hen.

Make a "Jobs at the Bakery" class book. Have each child decide what job they would like to have.

Fruits and Vegetables

Literature
The Very Hungry Caterpillar     Eric Carle
Eating Fractions     Bruce McMillan
The Little Mouse, The Big Ripe Strawberry and the Big Hungry Bear
    Audrey and Don Wood
Each Peach Pear Plum    Janet and Alan Ahlberg
Mr. Rabbit and the Lovely Present      Charlotte Zolotow
Tops and Bottoms      Janet Stevens
One Potato        Sue Porter

Activities
Make watermelon slices from paper plate halves (use watermelon seeds or
    black seeds for the seeds).

Make fruit salad.

Use stencils to make stuffed fruits and vegetables to hang from the ceiling.

Weigh potatoes, apples, oranges, etc. using balance scales and teddy bear
    counters.

Grow a sweet potato plant (place a sweet potato in water).

Tell The Very Hungry Caterpillar as a flannel board story.

Classify the vegetables grow in Tops and Bottoms.

Make a class book of fruits and vegetables.

Poems and Songs

Pancake
Mix a pancake,
Stir a pancake,
    Pop it in the pan.
Fry the pancake,
Toss the pancake,
    Catch it if you can.
                 Christina Rossetti

Jelly
Jelly on the plate,
Jelly on the plate,
Wibble, wobble,
Wibble, wobble,
Jelly on the plate.

Alphabet Rap
ABCDE       Fresh apples from the tree
FGHIJ        Big red lobsters from the bay
KLMNO     From underground, potatoes
PQRST       Tuna fish from the sea
UVWXY      From the bakery, cherry pie
ZZZZZ        Food is great, we all agree!

I'd Like to be a Pepperoni Pizza
(sung to I Wish I Were a Oscar Mayer Weiner)
I wish I were a _____________ pizza,
That is what I'd really like to be.
For if I were a ______________ pizza,
Everyone would want to eat me!
(fill in the blanks with your favorite pizza toppings)

Recipe
I can make a sandwich.
I can really cook.
I made up a recipe
that should be in a book.
Take a jar of peanut butter,
Give it a spread.
Until you have covered a half a loaf of bread.
Pickles and pineapple,
strawberry jam,
salami and bologna
and a half a pound of ham.
Pour some ketchup on it,
Mix in the mustard well,
It will taste delicious
if you don't mind the smell.
                         Bobbi Katz

Sing a Song of Big Mac
(sung to I'm a Little Teapot)
Sing a song of Big Mac
Sesame bun.
Two all beef patties,
Very well done.
Onions, pickles, lettuce,
Cheese and special sauce.
Please don't burp and please don't slurp,
Or mother will be cross!

Sing a Song of Pizza
Sing a song of pizza,
Mozzarella cheese,
Put on lots of bacon,
Some anchovies please.
When the pizzas baked,
We all begin to eat.
Isn't that a gooey dish,
To carry down the street?
 

Resources
Thematic units for Kindergarten     Kristin Schlosser
One Potato, Two Potato                Anne Cotton and Fran Martin