Little Cooks with Books ~ Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs

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My children love the book Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs.  They think it is hilarious and like to discuss what they wish would fall from the sky.  The girls heard from their friends at school that they movie was great, so we bought it this weekend.  It was really cute, and  all three children enjoyed it (which is a miracle).

After spending a weekend in Chewandswallow, it only made since to make meatballs for our Little Cooks with Books cooking lesson, so that is exactly what we did.  This cooking lesson went much better than our lesson last weekend.  The girls took turns and cooperated nicely.  Best of all the meatballs turned out perfectly!  Sam and Gracen were so proud to serve them at dinner (with spaghetti marinara).

My Goals for This Lesson ~

• Practice reading a recipe.
• Discuss abbreviations commonly used in recipes (For example:  T for tablespoon and tsp for teaspoon).
• Measuring dry ingredients.
• Cracking eggs.
• Roll the meat into balls.  

The Recipe ~  This recipe came from Mommy's Kitchen.

Ingredients

1 1/2 lbs ground beef (85% lean)
2 - eggs
1/4 cup milk
1/2 cup Italian bread crumbs
1/3 cup Parmesan cheese, grated
1 T. dried minced onion (We used fresh onion.)
1/2 tsp salt
1/8 tsp crushed red pepper flakes (optional)
1/2 tsp pepper

 

 Cutting an onion with our Curious Chef Large Nylon Knife and Green Pepper Cutting Board.

  

 Gracen sautes some onion.

 

Squishing all of the ingredients together.

  

Scooping meatballs with our Curious Chef Ice Cream Scoop.

Bake at 350 degrees for about 25 minutes.

 

The finished product.

The Results ~  The girls did very well with all of the goals.  The only part with which they needed assistance was making the meatballs a consistent size.  I gave them a scoop to use and that helped.  I also used the opportunity to explain that when they make meatballs or cookies they all have to be the same size so that they will cook evenly and at the same rate.  I told them that if they had some big meatballs and some little ones then the little ones would be done way before the big ones.  This made sense to them.

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs Activities and Printables

• Printables for Grades 2-4 
• Discussion Questions Grades 1-3
• Weather Activities Pre-K and Kindergarten 
• Pre-K Weather Printables
• On-line Game
• Coloring Pages 
• Spaghetti and Meatball Hat Craft
• We Can All Be Meteorologists Craft

Republished from March 2010 on Raising Itty-Bitty Bookworms

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