Homeschool Theater

Homeschool Books- what can you use? Using trade books can be an excellent way to introduce or reinforce a study subject with your homeschool students. “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs” is a popular book that my kids and I have enjoyed using. The tale is about weather and food, how the people have adapted to their town’s unusual circumstances and how they react when things go haywire. What study topics can we find in this enjoyable story?

Meteorology: The tall tale Grandpa shares is about the unusual weather a small town receives. This is a good intro to units on clouds, local or extreme weather or weather in general, climates, the water cycle, meteorologists and weather forecasting.

Food: Food in various forms plays a very important role in this story. This would be a fun start to learning about food sources, cooking, food in various cultures, nutrition and the food pyramid.

Social studies: How have people adapted to their food sources in different parts of the world? The townspeople of Chewandswallow had to adapt to a completely new food source when they had to leave their town, which opens up the topic of emigration/immigration. The book also offers the opportunity to discuss sanitation and recycling. You can even discuss safety and emergency preparedness, as the townsfolk had to deal with some scary weather situations.

Language arts: There are at least thirty compound words in the book. Learn vocabulary words such as incident, prediction and pulp. Grandpa told a tall tale; learn about tall tales and read Paul Bunyan and Pecos Bill tales, then let the kids either write (creative writing) or tell their own (storytelling). What are some of the crazy things that happened in Chewandswallow? Have your kids write a descriptive paragraph. Compare and contrast the book to the new movie. Spelling word lists can be made up of the foods mentioned or weather words.

The book, “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs” offers the homeschooling family plenty of opportunities to begin or continue any one of an assortment of relevant learning topics.