Pizza Themed Activity Mat

Activity mats are one of our favorite ways to play and learn together. We also love "celebrating" the fun quirky "holidays" because it brings us joy and is a fun way to spend time together learning. National Pizza Day is on February 9th and celebrates one of the most popular foods in America-pizza. Here's a look at our National Pizza Day activity mat in honor of the day of celebration.

Pizza Day Activity Mats

We first completed a Pizza Day activity mat when the kids were almost 2 and almost 4. At the time we kept it simple and made a cardboard pizza and added pepperoni to some pizza slices to practice counting. 

 

Now 5 years later, this mama pulled out the paper roll and whipped up a fun, age appropriate activity mat. Not only did we complete the same cardboard pizza activity as 5 years ago, but we got to practice and review some of the skills we have been learning in math and language arts. My kids all these years later, still love hands on activities. Friends they are never too old for play and hands on activities.

Preparing an Activity Mat 

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To create an activity mat, I start by mapping it out on paper and thinking through the things my kids are learning and then try to come up with activities based around our given theme. I always like to include a fun craft or activity mixed in with some learning activities. Sometimes I create a separate mat for each kid as you can see from our St. Patrick's Day Activity mat, or just incorporate both of their activities onto the same mat as I did with our Pizza activity mat below. 

I start by rolling out paper from my large paper roll. I have used both brown kraft paper and white paper and prefer the white just for visual purposes. Then from there I just use different art supplies or manipulatives I have on hand. This time around I chose to use some clip art for the one activity to save me some time. The wonderful thing about activity mats is being able to tailor them to our children using materials we have on hand.

Pizza Activity Mat Activities

Pizza Multiplication

Miss 8 has been diligently practicing her multiplication and division facts. For this activity, I drew some pizza slices on the mat and then wrote multiplication (and division) problems on it. I then wrote the answers on red dot stickers. To complete this activity mat activity she had to solve each problem and then find the red dot sticker and add it to the pizza. The dot stickers represented pepperoni. Miss 8 kindly informed me "Mommy it says Pizza Multiplication, but you wrote division problems too." Well honey that's what happens when mommy is working on this late at night when she should be sleeping but she's having too much fun setting up for morning. 

Parts of Speech Pizza 

Identifying  parts of speech is still a concept that Miss 8 has some trouble with so we sneak in all the extra practice that we can. For this activity I drew a whole pizza and then wrote either nouns, verbs, or adjectives on the pizza. On the red dot sticker pepperonis I wrote noun, adjective, or verb and she would have to read the word and identify whether it was a noun, adjective, or verb and then cover it with the corresponding pepperoni sticker.

Pizza Day Cardboard Pizza

The cardboard pizzas were a HUGE hit again and once they dried the kids happily played pizza shop for the majority of the day. To create the cardboard pizzas I started by cutting out circles from some cardboard I saved. I then cut up different pieces of construction paper to represent the different pizza toppings we typically add to our pizza. The sauce was simply red paint. 

To make the pizzas the kids started by adding the sauce to their cardboard dough using a spoon. The paint is actually the "glue" to hold on all of the toppings which is so cool. Once they got the sauce added then they went to work adding their different toppings, pressing each piece into the sauce. Once all the toppings were on we left them to dry and the kids had cardboard pizzas to play pizza parlor with. 

Pizza Fractions

For this activity, I printed out some pizza fraction clipart I had and glue them into the spot on the mat for Mr. 6 to identify. I added a little fraction line underneath each picture and then he simply filled in the fraction for each one. He did go back through and fix the mistake he had made after I took the picture. 

sh, ch, th Pizza 

Mr. 6 has been diligently working to learn how to read. Up until this past fall he had very little interest in learning how to read and we didn't push it with him. We got the Dash into Learning early reader set and he became more and more interested because he LOVES the characters in the books and then we tried the new Good and Beautiful LA program and between the two he has excelled over the last 6 months and loves reading. We used this as a review of the words he has been reading and practicing. 

I drew three different pizza slices and wrote either sh, ch, or th words on each one. Mr. 6 would read the word and if he said it correctly he got to cover it with a sticker pepperoni. He did so well and was so excited to read through them all without errors.