Around the World: Ciao from Italy!

Benvenuto in Italia! We boarded our makeshift plane, passports in hand and ready for our next adventure. My son already knew we were heading to a new destination when he opened his school bag and found his passport, a stamp and ink pad and a copy of Strega Nona by Tomie dePaola inside. Strega Nona is a longtime favorite book that I grew up loving and was eager to share with my son. It's quite wordy and at two and a half, I wasn't sure if he'd be into a book that long yet. He devoured every word, much like a plate of steaming, fresh spaghetti! 

After landing, stamping our passport (and each hand) and learning how to greet our new Italian friends with a friendly "ciao," we set to searching for Italy on our globe. My little pilot (who HAD to wear a tie on this day) loved seeing how Italy is shaped like a boot! He quickly set to work with his flag match tray and was excited to try making a shape pizza in his journal.

He's grown quite proficient in the process of setting up his "puzzle," applying glue to each piece
and flipping it over to place in the correct location!

This journal assignment combined our theme of Italian food with review of shapes, colors and numbers we have learned.

We worked through this activity step-by-step together.

He thought his pizza looked good enough to eat. He decided to pretend to pick it up and eat it!

It was time for some more Italian cuisine themed play and fun. Remember our Rainbow Pasta? It got a lot of use during our trip to Italy!

Floral foam pasta sculpture: great fine motor activity!

And for some more fine motor fun, try your hand at stringing pasta!  

He was quite pleased with the result!

All this playing and learning made us hungry, so we took a spaghetti lunch break...

And what he didn't finish didn't go into the garbage this time--we used it for some process art at the dining room table at a space I had intentionally left during our tabletop art together activity from the previous evening.

As he had fun painting and printing with individual strands of cooked spaghetti along with a chunk of spaghetti that stuck together like a paintbrush, we sang a favorite tickle rhyme:

Here's a piece of spaghetti

So slippery and thin

It wiggles and squiggles and tickles your chin!

Bon appetit and happy playing!