Who doesn’t love pancakes? The delicious breakfast treat can provide a lot of great ways to get kids excited about learning! Since my daughter has become a pancake fan, today’s book was a great way to practice some important skills while enjoying one of her favorite foods.
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book If You Give a Pig a Pancake
There are lots of ways that you can use this fun story to create learning opportunities for a variety of age groups!
Animal Stories – This story can also be used for writing practice. Have a variety of animals and food products written out in pairs and have kids write their own version of the story (If You Give a Cat a Cracker, If You Give a Raccoon a Raspberry, etc). As these stories follow a cyclical pattern, it may help students to outline their story on a circle on paper. These stories are lighthearted in nature so students can have fun trying to come up with crazy scenarios and bringing it back around to the beginning.
Pancake Sensory Bin – For younger children, pancake mix and kitchen tools can make a unique sensory experience. Fill a bin with flour and pancake mix and let kids use spatulas, measuring cups, spoons, whisks and bowls to play and explore.
Kids will flip over pancake word work!
Pancake Letter Work – To practice letter recognition or upper and lower case letter matching, create a stack of paper pancakes and mark each with an upper case letter. Make a stack of yellow square “butter” pieces marked with lower case letters. Have kids use spatulas to flip the butter pieces onto the matching pancakes.
Flipping For Math – The blog Izzie, Mac and Me utilizes this story to reinforce math skills using a spatula, a baking sheet and paper pancakes. This idea can be altered to suit different levels of math skills. For younger students, one side of the pancake can hold a number of dots, and the flip side can hold the number. For older students, one side can hold a math equation and the flip side can hold the solution. This can be used for addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, square roots, or more. As the students solve the equation, they can flip the pancake to check their answer.
Make pancakes together! Cooking together in the kitchen offers a lot of important learning opportunities, as well as a fun way to create new memories. You can teach kids about measuring and cooking safety, while enjoying delicious pancakes that you created together. Mix in chocolate chips, blueberries, or other fun flavors to make something really special and unique. We even used sprinkles to create special pancakes for my daughter’s birthday!
