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| Ping Pong Ball Soup Banquet! |
This week we learned about folk tales, what they are and how they have been passed down for centuries through word of mouth and writing. Every folk tale teaches an important life, moral lesson and represents the culture in which it is told.
We began by reading a Chinese version of
Stone Soup, in this version three monks are seeking the answer to "what is happiness?" Unable to find happiness in a small, poverty-stricken, suspicious town the monks seek to teach them happiness through the making of Stone Soup. Through this folk tale the children learned that sharing, caring and generosity bring people together and restore happiness.
We then read and compared the Chinese version to a universal version of
Stone Soup where weary, hungry travelers looking for compassion and food help a stingy, small town come together by making Stone Soup. The magic ingredient the travelers state was "sharing."
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| The class enjoying our Ping Pong Ball Soup! |
To wrap it up on Thursday,
with the amazing help of the parents (big thanks!!), the students contributed one single item. As they arrived I gave each student a note card describing the part they would play in our own version and reenactment of
Stone Soup. We then set our room up to be a little village and lived the folk tale.
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| Sharing is Caring! Eat Up! |
For us instead of Stone Soup we made
Ping Pong Ball Soup. As we played out the story the students began as rude, uncaring, villagers lacking in compassion for a poor, hungry, lonely teacher seeking just a crumb of food. By the end we had a hearty and delicious chicken vegetable noodle soup, bread, cheese and munchkins and enjoyed a feast for lunch while we read yet another version of
Stone Soup, this time set in Scotland with soldiers teaching a war-ravaged town about kindness and generosity.
