Strega Nona Day

We had another themed play day the other day, and the kiddos loved it, so I thought I'd share our fun with you. This time we planned our day around the story of Strega Nona, a Caldecott winner by Tomie dePaola. You can search out this book at your local library or watch and listen to the story here. If you don't know the story of Strega Nona, I encourage you to watch this so you can appreciate the magic pasta pot theme below. : )

I didn't even know there was another story that told how Strega Nona grew up and became the greatest Strega ever! Our friends brought this over, and filled us in. We are going to have to check this one out. 

Since I wasn't sure that all the kids had read the story, we started our get together by watching the book on DVD. I bought a set of Scholastic books on DVD at a kids consignment sale, and my boys are loving them. I love how they bring these stories to life. You can buy Scholastic DVDs here. Also, Netflix has started carrying some of these story DVDs. We just watched The Snowy Day, which would also be a great play day theme. Tip: search Scholastic, not the book title. 

After watching the story the kids did a few activities. I just googled to find a coloring sheet. 

I cut out some pasta pots, and pale yellow yarn, and the kids glued them to a paper plate, and added three heart stickers as her three kisses

like so. 

We also got out all our play pots and I cut more yarn for play pasta.

Then we had some lunch. Of course we had pasta! I set up a little pasta bar where the kids could choose red sauce, olive oil and parmesan, or pumpkin cream sauce with pepitas (my own recipe, which is so yummy if I do say so myself. I will share later this week).

Finally, for dessert I made brownie cupcakes to be the magic pots (not to be confused with magic pot brownies!) and let the kids squeeze on their own pasta frosting.

And that was our Strega Nona day.

I hope you have a great week! Thanks for reading!

-Haley


Sharing the fun @ All For the Boys