I think all of us have THE book that sparked our love of reading. For me, that book is Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs. I remember the first time my 3rd grade teacher read it to us and how it hooked me. I also remember checking it out of our school library for weeks after that. That is the power of a good book, and I want to share that experience with my students. That’s why we use Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs as our kickoff to learning about the weather!
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Set The Stage
We like to keep things pretty simple in our classroom, so when it’s time for Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs week, we set the stage by transforming our classroom into the town of Chewandswallow! And by transform, I mean I blow up some pool floats and hang them from the ceiling or stand them around the classroom. Boom. Easy. Fun. Cheap.
Pro Tip: Buy pool floats at the end of summer, and they’re super cheap. Also, Five Below always has fun food floats for $5 or less. Ask friends and family if they have pool floats you can borrow. And guess what? You can use one float, and it’s still fun! You can make food from a poster board and hang it up! The idea is simple, fun, and whimsical! Also, we have a pool, so some of these are the floats from our house!
Part of setting the stage is a costume. You know I love a costume, so of course, there is one for this book! And it’s so easy: gray sweatpants and a gray hoodie. Print some pictures of food on cardstock, laminate them, and hot glue them to your sweats. Bam. You’re now the town of Chewandswallow!
Comprehension Lessons
Our Read It Up! Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs was created to teach comprehension lessons with the book. We started with predictions, and after we read the story, we revisited our predictions and discussed what happened in the book. Predictions help students monitor their understanding of a story!
Then, we work on retelling the story using sequencing words.
The students then draw pictures and orally retell me the story using their pictures. I score their retelling using the included rubrics!
We also discuss how stories can be make-believe or fantasy but have real parts in the story. We discuss the real parts of the story and the fantasy parts and students draw and write about real and fantasy.
Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs Writing Lesson
Finally, students write about what kind of food they want to fall from the sky! Before we write, we share out all the food we want to fall from the sky and create a circle chart of ideas. This helps us focus our thinking, builds language, and gives us confidence in our writing. (You can see this lesson in the video below!
Creating A Forecast For Chewandswallow
Our final project or culminating task is for students to create a forecast for the town of Chewandswallow! After creating their forecast, students share their creations with the class!
Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs Sensory Bin
We also create a fun sensory bin to use during our Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs week! We used pasta that we dyed blue, and we used letter cards. Students choose a card, identify the sound, and color the picture for the sound.
Grab the FREE letter cards by clicking on the image below!
Grab our all-inclusive Read It Up Creation! to make planning and prep easy! (And remember ALL Read It Up! creations are ALWAYS Buy 1 Get 1 50% off in the TKS STORE! Use the code: BOGO50)
And if you want more food center activities, grab our Restaurant Center Creation!
For more ideas and resources, check out these posts:
