Soup from a Stone

When Mary Beth was in kindergarten her class had an adorable event just before Thanksgiving. We all enjoyed Stone Soup with her class and thought it was a lot of fun. The event is based on an old French folktale in which 3 soldiers come into a village asking for food. When none of the townspeople have any food to give, the soldiers said they'd have to just make stone soup. Once the stone was boiling in the water, the soldiers would suggest something that would make it so much better, and lo and behold the townspeople would run off to their homes to add to the pot. Now that Cory is in kindergarten, but at home, I thought it would be fun to plan something similar. So, we sent out invitations asking everyone in our school group to bring a small amount of something for our soup and to dress up as their favorite Thanksgiving characters. Meanwhile, the kids and I set about to planning some fun activities and arranging the necessary supplies.

We set up tables for our lunch and crafts at a facility available on base and got all dressed up in our costumes. Surprisingly, out of the 20ish kids there, only 2 were Pilgrims--we brought 3 Indians and 1 Pilgrim.

We read the tale of Stone Soup (notice I'm dressed as my favorite T-giving character, the turkey)

prepared our soup with three stones and all the ingredients everyone brought

played some games while the soup cooked

ate our soup--delicious!

Indian girls and the lone Pilgrim girl crafted

Indian boys and their mother crafted

The whole group gathered for our photo op with the sacrificial turkey pinata

And finally we came back in for dessert--which just so happened to also be Lucy's birthday cupcakes since it was her 3rd birthday (Ted, in his favorite T-giving character--the football player).

We also had these cute little Pilgrim hats for dessert. How adorable is that?

And after we got home Riley wanted to make an Indian costume for herself...