Word Family Pizzas

One of the reasons I wanted to continue our pizza unit was because I wanted to make these Word Family Pizzas. I came up with the idea while we were doing the unit back in January. Unfortunately, with my lack of energy and motivation I never got it ready. Suddenly, last week, my energy level and motivation were both back up. So, I made these to go with our second pizza week (which I will post more about at the end of the week).  

In order to make these I took brown construction paper and cut out 8 pizza slice shapes. Then I took white paper, cut in the same shape but with the crust cut off. I then colored a tiny bit red for the sauce and the rest yellow for the cheese.

I knew I wanted to start with the short a vowel family words so I decided to cut out some pink paper to represent ham (short vowel word). Then I made a list of words for each family (at, am, an, ap, ack, ab, ag, and ad) and wrote them on the ham pieces. 

I placed them in a bowl and grabbed a die out of a game we have.

In order to play the game we took turns rolling the die and counting out the number of toppings rolled. Then we sounded out the words one at a time and placed them on the pizza. The first ham piece got placed on any pizza slice. Then for the following pieces we would see if the word rhymed with any that were already on the pizza. If they rhymed they got placed on the same slice. If they didn't rhyme they got placed on a new slice.

As there is no winner or loser in this game it is fun for the children. They get to listen for rhyming words and because the rhyming words are all on the same slice the children can see the similarities. 

Next I am going to make toppings to go with the other short vowels.

Short e-pepperoni

Short i- olives

Short o- broccoli

Short u- mushroom

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