When the kiddos entered the room, the Italian music was playing, the room had been transformed, and their teachers had been replaced by chefs for the day! (That would still be us, just decked out in wigs, chef coats, and strange new accents that were supposed to be Italian...but somehow migrated towards "Southern", "Jamaican", and "Irish" throughout the day! :) For the record, the kids didn't care! They were HOOKED!
Next up, we began the day with the actual baking. We were, of course, in a bakery for Pete's sake! We chose a simple recipe that could be made on a hot plate and did not require baking just to speed up the process. We made Oatmeal Chocolate Bars (similar to these) but with ONE.SUPER.HUGE recipe adjustment. I told them I didn't like things that were too sweet, but more recipes that were salty-sweet. So I changed the recipe and left out 1/2 of the chocolate that was called for and used 1/2 CUP of SALT (you read that right) instead of BROWN SUGAR! I'm pretty sure I don't have to tell you what THAT did to the recipe. I'll just let their faces tell you instead!
It was NOT good people. It was AWFUL. It was INSANE. We had to SPIT.IT.OUT!
That was how we began the lesson! Now you KNOW these people were ALL in. So we talked about how that did not work AT ALL and maybe we should try it again and FOLLOW THE RECIPE with out leaving out any ingredients and without changing the recipe.
We decided to wait until later in the day. We had WORK to do. But this baking fiasco got our CONTENT kick-started. We talked about WHY the recipe was a disaster...left ingredients out, changed ingredients that didn't fit... Then I tied that all in to how BOOKS are a lot like RECIPES. They have certain ingredients (story elements) and they follow a recipe (beginning, middle, ending).
Next up I read a story. But being the busy chef that I was, I only read the beginning and the ending. They were like "Well, that didn't make sense. What the heck happened in the middle?" Again we talked about stories needing to "follow the recipe" to make sense.
Next up we read When Will It Be Spring? The WHOLE book this time!
We used story sequencing cards from Heather Cacak. To make it fit our bakery flip, the kids used pie pans to order the "ingredients" into the pans using plastic tongs. The whole table had to work together with each person taking turns to add "ingredients".
When all groups were finished, we got to play the PIE FACE GAME! (It's a tradition in Chef Valenti's Bakery, don't you know!!!) We just let each kiddo come up and have 1 click so as to speed the game along AND make sure everyone got to have a turn. We were CRACKING up I tell you!!!
Next up, we came back together and made our own RECIPE for a GREAT STORY on the Activboard. Now we are really tying in the FUN with the CONTENT!
Next up, the kiddos worked with a partner to complete a story elements interactive notebook page from Deanna Jump's Reading Interactive Notebook K-2 pack on TpT. The kiddos did an outstanding job looking for all of the elements and details in our book.
Whew! That's enough for tonight. We'll finish up the day in Part Three! Check back soon!
