Making soup!

For the past week the students have been getting excited about Thanksgiving, which is coming up this weekend.  We have been reading books about this holiday, singing songs and learning about various foods we enjoy with our families.

When I told the children that I made soup the other night at my house, and I will be making it again on the weekend to celebrate Thanksgiving, an interesting conversation started!

We heard the children discussing their favourite vegetables in soup and some even bringing their lunches over to show us that they would be eating soup for lunch!

So I decided that today the students would really enjoy making soup and eating it altogether.

 

We started our morning by watching the book Tops and Bottoms adapted and illustrated by Janet Stevens on Tumblebooks.

If your school does not have an account with Tumblebooks, you can always read the book or play this You Tube video for your students.

I brought in a variety of real vegetables that we would be using for our soup so I showed the students what fresh garden vegetables look like (dirt and all!).

We discussed how some vegetables grow mostly underground with only part of it sticking up (carrots) and other vegetables that grew mainly above ground (celery).

It was great that the students were able to compare the real vegetables that I brought in!

After the book was finished, we got to work.

The children worked together to wash all of the vegetables (and their hands!) before we peeled and chopped.

I demonstrated how to use the peeler and a few children helped with that difficult task.

It sure was hard but they kept working at it!

We also learned which part of each vegetable we could eat and which ones we needed to remove.

I did all of the chopping as the students are still too young to use a sharp knife, but they all took turns putting the vegetables into the pot!

That was just as much fun!

Once all of the vegetables had been peeled, chopped and placed in the pot, we were ready to add water.  We walked our pot of soup to the staffroom to cook for several hours.

While we were waiting for the soup to cook, some students helped with the cleaning.

We needed to wash all of our things!

After our outdoor play, the soup was finally ready!

It was so tasty!

Later on in the afternoon, we met back on the carpet and the students wrote out our soup recipe for the other classes to use.  They were sure to list all of the ingredients as well as step-by-step instructions.We also typed out the recipe and sent it home so that this weekend the children can enjoy making our vegetable soup with their family.

And what a perfect way to end today...a student wanted to continue making soup at our Dramatic Centre!

Hmmmm...I'm thinking we will be talking more about soup tomorrow....and reading Stone Soup!

What are some of your favourite books relating to harvest vegetables?