2013 TSGI Sprouts: Growing Vegetable Soup

We got to touch and feel all different kinds of fruits and vegetables in the pool this morning. We felt corn husks, apples, sweet potatoes, carrots, russet potatoes, celery, onions, and tomatoes. We talked about the smells, colors, and textures and if each item was a fruit or a vegetable.

The playground was busy as usual this morning. Both Ryan and Bristol seemed interested in playing with some of the other kids today. Ryan enjoyed mowing the lawn and playing with some of the open windows on the playground equipment. Bristol continues to LOVE the balls. She gathers them all up and then rolls them across the playground. She rolled them back and forth to me and Ryan for almost 6 consecutive turns.

This week we are talking all about foods that grow. We read the book Growing Vegetable Soup by Lois Elhert. This book has colorful illustrations as a father and a child take the reader through the life cycle of a vegetable from the seed to the sprout and all the way until they pick the vegetables and make them into soup. After we read the story, we pretended to grow and pick our own vegetables using pretend, plastic produce. We cut them using a knife and a cutting board, placed them into a pot, stirred them, and pretended that it was too hot to eat! After we blew on the soup and let it cool, we thoroughly enjoyed our healthy meal! :)

We also made a chart and talked about whether certain pictures were or were not vegetables. This exercise helps us start to learn about some simple categories.

We then joined the Busy Beginner and Terrific Transition classes to make our own vegetable soup, and boy was that fun! Miss Kelly talked about how we had to follow a "recipe" in order to make vegetable soup. All the kiddos got to touch, feel, and smell each vegetable ingredient that went into the soup. She cut the tomato, showed us the seeds, and peeled the carrot. She showed us all the layers of the onion, and we learned that the strong smell of the onion sometimes makes us cry! We also learned that a stalk of celery is very crunchy and sometimes still has the leaves on it. We placed all of the ingredients into the blender and added some water. We warned all the kiddos that a blender can be really loud and that if it was too loud for our ears, than we should just cover them, rather than yell ourselves. The blender was indeed loud, but everyone handled the noise with ease. After about 5 minutes, our vegetable soup was well blended, hot, and ready to eat! There were a few children (maybe 1 or 2) that liked the flavor of the soup; however, Bristol and Ryan were not one of these children!