Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs

Apparently October is "National Pasta Month" or, that's what I learned from The Best of Totline, a book filled with activities for 3-5 year olds that I found in the library. The book suggested a bunch of activities having to do with pasta that I thought Hadley would enjoy, and I thought I'd try and tie them in with the book Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs by Judi Barrett.

I told Hadley we were going to make pasta necklaces, but we had to color the pasta first.

We poured the pasta into Ziploc bags.


Then we dumped water and food coloring into the bags.
Then you shake the bag up.
Voila!
We had to wait for the pasta to dry, so I suggested we read Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs while we wait. Hadley thought this was a fine idea.
One of the things I like about Hadley getting older is that we can read more books with advanced plotlines. It's a lot of fun to talk with Hadley as we go through stories with characters and events that she has questions about. One thing she almost always comments on is characters' facial expressions, especially when they aren't smiling. On the very first page of the story today, the two children are sitting at the breakfast table having a competitive conversation over who can eat the most pancakes. Hadley wanted to know right away what was going on with these two kids. Throughout the book we paused a lot to inquire about people's facial expressions. The worst one was explaining why one man had a piece of pasta on his head (it fell from the sky). I don't think Hadley was too keen on seeing a man walk around with pasta on his head. Who would, really?
Another thing Hadley wants to know about the characters in the books we read is their names. In this book, the girl is telling the story, but I don't think we ever find out what her name is. I was able to tell Hadley that the boy's name is Henry, but Hadley had to know what the girl's name is as well.
"I'm not sure, Hadley. Why don't you name her?"
"OK. I'll name her Goofy."

Hadley really liked looking at the pictures in this story. There's a lot going on on each page and she had fun pointing out things she recognized. Her favorite page was the page with the Sanitation Department's clean up truck. It has a large fork and spoon attached to it with an enormous bowl on the back to put the leftover food in. Hadley loved this page.

Hadley wanted to read the story several times (a sure sign she likes a book) which was a good thing because the pasta took awhile to dry. Once it did, she and I sat down to make our pasta necklaces.
This activity was a little difficult for Hadley because it was hard to put the string all the way through the pasta (I used penne). I think I should've used a smaller pasta so Hadley didn't have so much to feed through. Despite my help, she still had fun playing with the pasta, and she loved her necklace. She wore it the rest of the day.