I don’t know why I was thinking about this the other day, but one of my favorite times at my daughter’s preschool was when all the families were invited to make stone soup. Stone Soup is a classic story (and there are actually a few different books that tell it from different authors) but the idea is that no one wants to share what they have until someone suggests making stone soup, and then everyone adds what they have to make the soup better, ultimately creating a lovely meal for all to share.
There’s a short version of the story you can print out from Education.com if you don’t have the book version handy.
We literally did this by every family bringing something to add (our contribution was multi-colored carrots), and Rainy Day Mum has a post about doing this with her kiddo, though it’s more fun to do as a group. You can use the “recipe” in the version of the book you read or just have everyone bring a vegetable. They also used a potato as their stone; I think we had a real stone that had been washed and wrapped in foil.
Here’s another recipe from Primary Playground. They also have a free printable coloring page on Teachers Pay Teachers where kids can color in the items that are in their soup. There’s also a paid set of printables on how to make soup with a little book and sequencing activities, which you can use to make soup in class or at home.
Use the science activity from Books and Giggles to make a prediction as to whether soup with a stone in it will taste different from regular soup. This requires two pots but you can start it all in one pot then add some to another pot with a stone in it.
Mrs. Albanese’s Class has free printable vegetable cards you can use when talking about stone soup (and if you don’t want to make real soup in the classroom you can use them for storytelling along with play vegetables).
Susan Jones on Teachers Pay Teachers has a nice set of worksheets kids can use to compare and contrast different versions of the story, make a book about their own soup and more. Check out her blog post about it for all the details.
Do you use stone soup in the classroom or at home? I’d love to hear how you do it!
