Meatball Matching

Spaghetti and Meatball Matching Game

This week we read the book On Top of Spaghetti, written by Paul Brett Johnson. I decided to make a spaghetti and meatball plate as a craft project with Emily and then it turned into a matching game.

Emily gluing on the "spaghetti" yarn

(Last week she helped me cut the pieces of white yarn up and I dyed them with tea).

Emily squeezing the glue over the "spaghetti"

Shaking the "sauce" sparkles over the glue.

For the Meatballs:

Last week Emily and I sponge painted some poster board with brown paint and then I cut out circles for the meatballs. I was going to have her just glue them on the plates, but to turn this into a matching game I put a piece of Velcro on each plate and then a piece on the back of 4 of the meatballs. Then, I put a different colored dot sticker on each of the 4 meatball with Velcro. I also put colored dots on 3 other meatballs of each color that did not have Velcro.

To play:

I attached 1 of each of the colored meatballs with Velcro to each of the paper plates. Then I mixed up the other meatballs without Velcro and gave the pile to Emily. She took each of the meatballs, told me the color and put it on the plate with the matching colored meatball.

Emily enjoyed playing this game so much I think we played it 10 times in a row! Sometimes she would give me the stack and tell me where to put each of the meatballs.

You could also use the meatballs to do patterning or turn them upside down and use them to play memory.

I also made a set that had the letters "A", "B", and "C" on them since we are going to be working on letters soon.