Food Curriculum, Day Eight

Can you guess what today is? That’s right! It’s vegetable soup day! Of course, you will read Growing Vegetable Soup and sing “Do You Know the Veggie Soup Man?” For your cooking activity, pass around whole vegetables-a potato, a carrot, a celery stalk, an onion, a tomato…talk about how they look, feel, etc., have your students name them and describe them. To actually make your soup, you could either chop the veggies in front of the students and have them help you put them in the pot, or you could use bags of frozen vegetables or use canned veggies. I prefer using frozen or canned veggies so that the students do not have a lot of time to just sit and watch you! I think that a Crock-Pot is best for this….put your veggies and water or broth in the pot in the morning, set it on high, and let it cook all morning. You could have it for lunch or for a snack.

For fine motor today, give your students a large circle traced on a sheet of thin cardboard to cut. You will want to use something really sturdy for this….construction paper won’t work for tomorrow’s art activity-pizzas! You will also want to prepare several things ahead of time: shredded yellow paper (cheese), slivers of white and green paper (onions and peppers), mushroom shapes cut from light brown paper, and small red circles (pepperoni). You could have your students use a handheld circle punch (like you would use for scrapbooking) to cut their own pepperonis.