Pizza

Ooh la la!  It's a pizza pie-a!

Almost everyone loves pizza.  It's flat.  It's round.  You can put almost any topping on it (as long as it tastes good).  What ISN'T there to love about pizza?  That's why we decided to do an entire storytime based on this delicious theme.

Books:

Hi, Pizza Man! by Virginia Walter

Pete's Pizza by William Steig

The Little Red Hen (Makes a Pizza) by Philomen Sturges

Other Great Books about Pizza:
The Princess and the Pizza by Mary Jane Auch
Dragon Pizzeria by Mary Morgan
Hold the Anchovies! A Book about Pizza by Shelly Rotner
Tony and the Pizza Champions by Tony Gemignani
Pizza at Sally's by Monica Wellington
Pizza Man by Marjorie Pillar

Click Here to Order these Books on the Heights Library Catalog

Special Visit:  How lucky are we?  A server and kitchen manager from Dewey's Pizza came over to show the children how a pizza is made.  They brought out trays of pizza dough and a bowl of flour.  They even let the children touch the dough and feel how sticky it is.  After this, the magic happened.  The amazing kitchen manager threw up the dough, tossing and spinning it into the air until it was perfectly flat and round.  We were all so amazed!  Every time he tossed the dough in the air, the children laughed and jumped.

First they prepare the dough by adding flour

He spins the dough until it gets bigger

And bigger

And whoa!  Look at the size of that thing!

What a blast!  Thank you, Dewey's Pizza, for sharing your talents with us and for making such delicious pizza!

We made this Thank-You Pizza for them to show our great appreciation

Art Project: We made our own pizzas of course!  But not out of food.  You see, the pizzas we made will never go stale.  For dough, we used a paper plate.  We then added red paint (a.k.a. "pizza sauce") to the middle of the plate.  Slap it on thick if you want to!  Shredded yellow paper was used in place of mozzerella cheese.  If the paint is still wet, it will count as an adhesive to the "cheese" and they will dry stuck together.  Now, you can't make just a cheese pizza for this project; we need toppings!  I prepared some of the toppings beforehand to get them started:

• Olives were made from cutting ovals in black construction paper.  A hole punch was then used to clip a circle to indicate that the olive is "pitted."
• Pepperonies were made out of circles cut from red construction paper
• Mushrooms were made out of brown construction paper
• Green peppers were made out of green tissue paper cut into thin strips
• Onions were made out of white tissue paper cut into thin strips
• Pineapples were made from yellow foam triangles
• Sausages were made from circles cut out of thin sandpaper and given a darker shade of brown textured from a brown crayon

These items were then glued onto the mozzerella cheese.  I left out construction paper of different colors and scissors so that the children could make any other toppings they desired.  Once it is dried, you can even cut the pizza into triangles to make slices and then put them back together again! 

Dewey's' Pizza was so kind, they equipped each child with a small Dewey's pizza box to take their pizzas home in.  How great is that?  It was absolutely the perfect take-home project because then the pizzas could dry safely in their boxes.  Oh yeah, and they look pretty perfect in there too.

If these supplies are hard to obtain, a delicious looking pizza can be made from simply using a paper plate and colored construction paper (this pizza was made in an earlier storytime with the same theme and goes great with the artistic style of Sturges' The Little Red Hen [Makes a Pizza] done entirely with cut paper).

Bon appetit!