Pizza Can Make Learning Fun

Teachers, home school parents, and parents are always looking for innovative ways to incorporate learning into a regular day. While almost anything can be an authentic learning experience, nothing is better accepted by kiddos than an activity that involves pizza. There are many skill sets and objectives than can be met around the lunch or dinner table by enjoying everyone's favorite dinner.

For the younger crowd, actually making the pie can incorporate many preschool skills. The big circle itself and the triangles it is cut into create a simple shape recognition lesson, and for learners a smidge older, it is a hands-on lesson in how you can use shapes together to make other shapes. Two right triangles make a square, a circle can be made into four or more triangles, etc.

Sorting is also a fundamental preschool skill, and it is an objective that can be met by using toppings. Try providing colored bowls that correspond with certain colored toppings. Cheese goes in the white bowl, pepperonis or tomatoes in the red bowl, pineapples go in the yellow bowl, and peppers go in the green bowl. Set the bowls out on an open space and let your little one decide which bowl matches what topping.

For early elementary kids who are learning to write and tell stories, there is nothing more fun to document than how to make a pizza. First spread the dough, then pour the sauce, etc., and of course sharing is a skill on which any age child can brush up.
Perhaps the most authentic lessons involving a piping hot pie are those involving math. Fractions, of course, can be taught easily by dividing the pie into several different parts. If you are deft with a slicer, you can learn from halves all the way to sixteenths. Division is an easy task when a ten-piece pizza needs to be distributed among four people. This is a very visual and authentic idea for third to fourth graders who are struggling with long division and the idea of remainders.

Have you ever gotten the requirement for a creative learning assignment that has you at a loss for materials? Mini pizzas of varying sizes make a great solar system. The Earth's moon could be made of, what else, cheese? The moons for other planets would be great disguised as Canadian bacon or pepperoni, and those ringed planets are begging for strips of bacon. What student will not be a class favorite when he brings an eatable project to school?

By: Andrew Stratton

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