Monthly Archives: November 2014

Pumpkin soup and wrapping up

On monday after Halloween to start wrapping up I set up a cooking centre at the back of our classroom. I wanted to make pumpkin soup with the students. The main reason for doing this is that I wanted to explore the idea of what happens to pumpkins after halloween. I thought this would be an appropriate way to think about social responsibility from the perspective of young children.

I chopped up the two small pie pumpkins that we used for measurement at home and brought all the ingredients into the classroom. I set up the centre next to the sink so students could wash their hands before we started. The students were incredibly excited about this and one student even thought that what we were doing was going to be “pretend”. When he saw the vegetables he exclaimed “We’re making REAL soup!”. Another student promptly informed him that our soup was “non-fiction” 🙂

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Our recipe:

4 cups of vegetable stock

2 pie pumpkins

2 onions

2 potatoes

2 carrots

1/4 cup of cream

cumin, nutmeg, coriander, garlic

Cook on high for 4.5 hours

The students came over to the centre in groups. Each student had a chance to measure out something and pour it into the big crock pot. Afterwords I moved the crock pot to the counter outside the classroom and plugged it in there instead of inside our classroom for safety. That afternoon we all tasted the soup. One student carefully helped me “set the table” for everyone. I think one of the most important outcomes for the students was the social skills. We practiced different things we could say if we didn’t like the soup. “No thank-you.” or “That’s not for me”. (Our yes/no question for that day was “Do you think you will like the soup?)

A really fun time- more pictures to come.

“My Pumpkin Book”- Literacy activity

I decided to make little books with the students. I thought it would bring them a lot of joy to be authors and illustrators. This activity included science, literacy, fine motor skills and directed drawing. These books were made over the course of two blocks of time on Thursday (before and after music). I was at first planning on doing this activity over the course of several days but the students were so engaged my SA encouraged me to keep going while I had their attention!

I think the reason why this type of activity was so engaging for the students is because of all the hands on activities we have done with pumpkins up to this point. Doing this type of activity at the beginning of the project probably would have been a flop, at this point however the students have tons of knowledge about pumpkins that they wanted to represent and share with others. The book is simple, a cover and three pages. “Outside my pumpkin. Inside my pumpkin. My pumpkin on Halloween.”

I was really happy with the outcome of these little books. The highlights for me were the students “reading” the predictable text to me when they were done. The students were really proud of their work. Many students indicated they wanted to show their families and put the books in their journals. Also nice, was that my SA really liked them. I felt like she was really proud of me and that was a good feeling. She’s so supportive, I’m really lucky to have her.

Now my students are scientists, authors and illustrators- we are on a roll!