Sight Words with Strega Nona

 

A big bowl of steaming pasta and a little old lady with a magic touch. That combination provides comfort and a bit of nostalgia to many. Tomie dePaola recognizes this and created Strega Nona, a little old woman who is well known in her village for solving people’s troubles with her magic touch. She has become a beloved character in a series of books, and she teaches the reader some important lessons.

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Strega Nona was written and illustrated  by Tomie dePaola. She helps the people in the village, but she decides that she is getting older and needs some help as well. So she hires Big Anthony to help take care of her home. When she leaves to visit her friend, she leaves Big Anthony behind, but warns him not to touch the magic pasta pot. When he decides to try the magic pasta pot on his own, chaos ensues!

To bring the story of Strega Nona and her pasta pot alive for kids, there are several learning opportunities you can create!

Sight Word Practice

Sight Word Spaghetti – To encourage kids to practice their sight words while incorporating the yummy pasta from the story, you can create sight word spaghetti to share with your kids. This idea comes from Mrs. Bremer’s Kindergarten blog. She wrote out sight words for the kids on brown paper “meatballs”. She added these to a large bowl full of yellow yarn “spaghetti” and had the students use tongs to pull out a meatball.

Since my daughter is only 2, I changed this game up to suit her skill level. You can easily adapt this for younger children by putting letters or numbers on the meatballs and have them identify what letter or number they pulled out of the pasta. She had a lot of fun searching for the letter meatballs and pulling them out of the pasta.

Spaghetti Letters – This is a fun sensory experience as well as practice with letter or number recognition. Give kids a pile of yellow yarn or cooked and cooled spaghetti noodles. Give them a letter of the alphabet or a number and have them make it using their “noodles”. For younger kids, you could also write out numbers or letters on sheets of paper and have them lay their pasta over it to trace it. If the real pasta sticks to the paper, place the sheets into a Ziploc bag to create a barrier.

 

Make Your Own Pasta

Cook Dinner Together – Cooking with your kids can provide a variety of leaning opportunities, plus it can help you to create some great memories. A big bowl of pasta would be an easy dish to make with kids, and they can customize it to suit their tastes. Whether your kids are reading the recipe, carefully cutting up ingredients or measuring ingredients, they will be learning important skills and reinforcing important concepts. My daughter loves to help us in the kitchen, and she is a huge fan of pasta (especially with Parmesan cheese!).

Rainbow Pasta – To take the story of Strega Nona one step further, why not create some delicious rainbow pasta with your kids? Mix a few drops of food coloring into different pots of boiling water and cook your pasta as you normally wood. When you drain the pasta pots, mix the different pastas in one bowl and watch your kids eyes light up! You can use this fun pasta as a meal, or let it cool and place it into a bin or sensory table and let them explore it. Add cups or spoons and let them have fun pouring and stirring it.

There are so many fun activities you can create to bring the world of Strega Nona to life. Who doesn’t love a bunch of pasta?Learning with Strega Nona

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33 comments on “Sight Words with Strega Nona

  1. I love Strega Nona and the yarn idea is priceless! I don’t think I’ve read this one to my own kids so into my cart it goes! Thanks so much for the suggestion and the post.

  2. Love the sight word spaghetti idea! I am definitely going to give that a whirl with my three year old, but we will change it to letters and numbers. He loves play food, so he’ll be all over this! Thanks for sharing!

  3. I never knew of this book. Would love to get now for my sin. The ide and teh concept is really great in the book. The way it explains words is just perfect to help kids memorise. Thanks for sharing

    • Aw, thank you! Tomie dePaola is one of my favorite authors and Strega Nona was always one of my favorite characters!

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