I didn’t know what to call this game because it uses so many skills, but it truly is a gross motor reading game. The player needs to recognize sizes, sound out words for the street names as well as recognize numbers for the house addresses. Also, it incorporates gross motor and balance as they push the car along the streets. Of course, I wouldn’t be posting an activity like this without making adaptations easy. The street names could be turned to letters such as A Street. B Street etc… and the houses could be colors instead of numbers! My son who is almost 5 loves this game, we have played with friends and alone over the past week. The best part is that new street names and house numbers can be added so easily!
- Gather your materials. You will need a patch of floor, painter’s tape, some construction paper ( I used black, brown, orange, and yellow), a glue stick, a marker, white paper, and some scissors. Oh, and a toy car, my son wanted one with space to actually put the pizza in it so ours is huge. Use your favorite.
- Start by choosing the words you want to make into the street names. The player will have to find the right address to deliver the pizza and will have to read all the streets they drive on. I chose to do all sm , sn and sp blends but any words will do. For us my son needed to work on sounding out so I chose words he wouldn’t be as apt to read by sight. Write them on white paper.
- Glue them on black construction paper and cut out.
- Next up make the houses. As you can see my goal is not perfection , it’s fun so as long as my son can tell it’s a house , I am happy.
- Pop some numbers on the houses. Try to make some that are “easy” for your child, ones they will recognize immediately and some that are a challenge.
- Time for pizza. If your child is gaga for crafts have them make the pizza while you do the previous steps. We made 6 total – 2 large, 2 medium and 2 small.
- Don’t forget the pizzeria – ours is elaborate 😉
- Now create the road way with tape on your floor.
- Place the streets and houses with numbers on the roadway.
- Invite your player to come and deliver the pizzas! How to play: Pretend to call the pizza place asking for any combo of the pizza sizes such as one large and two smalls. Give them your address ( which of course is determined by the house on the street… so ours was #77 Smoke street ), then as they deliver the pizza they have to read the streets they use to get there.
- Keep going until all the pizzas are delivered!
- Switch up where each road is and move the houses around for the next round! This was such a hit we played for a long time.
Books About Pizza to read after Playing a Gross Motor Reading Game!
The Princess and the Pizza
The Little Red Hen (Makes a Pizza)
Pizza at Sally’s
shar says
A great activities! I have a few boys in mind who will be very motivated and who will very much benefit. Pintrest’ed!
BMackey says
ooh! ‘hi, Pizza Man!’ by virginia walter!
Michelle Sexton says
this is a cute idea. My son can’t read yet, but I think this would be a great idea to work on shapes, colors , letters, and numbers
Valarie says
Oh my word this is such a great idea! My son will love this. I can hear him asking to play this again & again. We’ll definitely be doing this tomorrow & then making homemade pizzas for lunch to tie in a little more fun & learning. Thank you for another awesome idea.
P.S.Totally unrelated, but I was wondering if you have your pumpkin pancakes recipe posted anywhere else besides the p is for pumpkin post? When I click the link to go to the recipe it gives me an error page. We love that recipe & for some reason I never wrote it down.??
admin says
I am looking for it I don’t know why the link is broken! Here I found it …
Valarie says
Great! Thank you.
Aida says
This is a nice idea. it practices the multiple intelligences of the child. It teaches the child how to read, analyze and perform the activity.
Carla @ Whole Child Creative Curriculum says
Oooh, I love this idea! We’ll be doing something similar in the near future!
Katie says
This is a perfect activity that can be used for homework for my students…I am a speech pathologist (and blogger) always looking for new ideas for therapy and homework! I’m pinning this for sure! Thanks for the awesome ideas!
katherinemarie says
What a delightful and FUN FUN FUN idea!!!!
jodie says
This is great! We made our own version today, using family names as street names. My 3 year old loved it!
Tami Valentine says
This game looks really neat! It incorporates many skills.
Another good book about pizza is Pete’s a Pizza by William Steig . All 3 of my kids loved this book. It’s about a little boy that is “made” into a pizza by his father. He rolls him in dough, sprinkles cheese, etc…and is really ticklish to Pete. It’s a cute one.
Madeleine says
You are a genius! Thank you SOOOOO much!
John Vogel says
Great Idea! My son will love this! Thanks!
Tara Ziegmont says
Do you still play this? What does M do? I am looking for ideas to do with Grace to help with her decoding and sounding out skills, but I’m afraid Allie would take our pieces and run away.
admin says
We haven’t played it in a while – but usually these activities would be done during nap time. I know Allie isn’t napping but maybe you could make her some with colors or numbers to play with at the same time?
Amy (Malaysia) says
Did your son able to read? How old is he when he started to read?
Manders says
Just what I need for my class. Thank you
Maecy says
Thank you! We did this and had so much fun. Just a little adaptation for math for my olders. I had them convert the inches of each road into miles. Distance, rate, and time problems. Some questions abt mapping the shortest distance from one place to another, and questions abt how much pavement needed for each road and how to find the exact center of a road. It was really fun. The littles enjoyed making and delivering pizzas and the olders were happy to see math applied in a fun situation.
Kim Baumgart says
FUN!!!! Another favorite pizza book – Pete’s A Pizza!
Cathy Jarrell says
I tutor a kindergarten student at school, so I created this game on a roll of butcher paper so it was portable. She LOVED it! I also created little dollar bills so she could practice more addition and subtraction, and we added “GPS” to help the delivery driver and reinforce right/left directions. One of the teachers watched us play and asked about your website. I’ve been telling everyone! Great ideas. Thanks very much!
Andy says
Awesome idea and my 5 year old boy loves it! Thank you