Materials:

• Several boxes of Pistachio pudding mix

• Junior baby food jars with lids for each group

• 1 pint of milk for each jar, tape or CD of swamp sounds, such as Sounds Of Nature: Southern Swamp by Suzanne Doucet

• "Alligator Pie" poem on chart paper (see below)

• A big "canvas" bag in which to carry the “gator” filled jars

• The recipe for “Gator Pie” (see below)

• A stuffed gator, fishing net, knee-high work boots and a fishing/hunting vest work well as props if they are available (anything camouflage or khaki).

Instruction:

1.  Prepare baby food jars with about 3 cup pudding powder and replace caps on jars.  Place jars and cartons of milk in bag.

2.  Put on your costume and “become” the Gator Hunter!

3.  Start music and emerge from behind a bookcase, or from an adjoining room, as the Cajun Gator Hunter.  Introduce yourself using your best Cajun accent and explain that their teacher invited you to read this book because you are such an expert on gators. 

4.  Read the book Gator Pie by Louise Mathews, emphasizing the fractions introduced. 

5.  After the book, proceed to weave a “whopper” about your recent gator hunting expedition and the great uses for ground-up gator (show pudding in jars).  Elicit help from the class to help you make “real” Gator Pie. Have students pour milk into jars and replace caps tightly.  As they pass the jars around the table, shaking the mixture, they have to chant the words to the poem.  After sufficient shaking, supply a graham cracker pie shell for them to pour their mixture into.  Refrigerate pie several hours or supply spoons and let them sample immediately.

6.  Supply Gator Pie recipes and have students work in groups of four to explore how they would have to increase the amounts of the ingredients to make a pie big enough for four. Continue increasing the scale until a pie big enough to feed the class could be made.

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Gator Pie
Recipe

1 1/2 cups ground-up Gator, with bones

3 1/2 cups cold milk

1 pie shell

Pour ground-up Gator into large jar.  A large mayonnaise jar works well.  Pour in cold milk and screw cap on tightly.  Shake up the mixture for 5 minutes while chanting Alligator Pie poem.  Pour mixture into pie shell and refrigerate several hours.  To serve, supply two hungry children with spoons, set the pie between them and tell them to “Dig in!”

THIS IS NOT A REAL RECIPE - Sorta'

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