Stone Soup: How our Forest Preschool Celebrates Community
Written by Joslyn Chen, Environmental Educator
With the temperature getting colder and the sun setting earlier, animals in our forest and people of our community settle back into their winter weather routines. For the Friends of Rye Nature Center, this means it’s time for us to usher in the seasonal change with one of our favorite events of the school year, our Stone Soup Celebration. This annual fall festivity perfectly embodies the key elements of our Forest Preschool program: the gift of sharing and community engagement.
Many people think of Stone Soup as a story about clever travelers pulling a fast one on a village, but at its heart, it’s really about what can happen when people come together. In the older versions, the villagers aren’t always selfish—sometimes they simply don’t have much to give. Yet by starting with nothing more than a simple stone, the travelers inspire everyone to share what little they have, creating something far greater than the sum of its parts. That spirit of generosity and togetherness is what our teachers focus on today, and it’s the reason this story continues to resonate so deeply with our Forest Preschool community.
Today, you can find dozens of modified versions. Some take on a cultural twist, like Vincent Chen’s, “Hot Pot Night,” where the tenants of an apartment bring ingredients together to make a soup in a hot pot. Or Alan Durant’s, “Quill Soup,” where the characters are animals foraging in a forest. Each teaching team has their preferred version, but the lesson our students learn remains the same!
Chopping away! (With child safe knives of course)
At the Rye Nature Center, we pull out all the stops to bring this story to life. In the season of giving and thankfulness, it is the perfect segue to help teach how important the power of sharing is. Each student in our preschool program is responsible for contributing one ingredient. We spend time going over the story in class, collecting smooth stones from the woods, and finding natural centerpieces to decorate our table for the feast. All to build the excitement that we will be cooking up a soup of our own! The children help cut vegetables, go over the recipe, and then pass the final baton to the teachers for the finishing touches. We then spend the whole night cooking up to five separate pots of this magical soup, all thanks to the combined efforts and care of each of our students. The next day, we welcome everyone’s family to join us in the forest to taste our stone soup.
Ask any past student or their family member; this is a calendar event that our preschoolers will remember forever. The day is filled with the enticing aroma of vegetable soup, hot cocoa, a roaring campfire, and the warm, cozy feeling of accomplishment. Smiles are reaching ear to ear as (mostly all) the kids are tasting the product of their hard work! Being able to share this special moment and our forest with our community is one of the best parts of our Forest Preschool program, and we are so lucky to have shared it with countless families so far.
If you’d like to cook up your own Stone Soup, here is our recipe:
Ingredients
4 cups vegetable broth
2 cups water
1 (14.5oz) can diced tomatoes, keep liquid
½ cup lentils, uncooked
½ cup barley, uncooked
1 onion, diced
2 celery stalks, minced
2 large carrots, diced
2 zucchinis, diced
4 Yukon potatoes, diced
3 cloves garlic, smashed
Instructions
In a large pot, add the broth, water, and canned tomatoes. Stir well and bring to a boil over medium high heat.
Add lentils, barley, onion, garlic, celery, carrots, potatoes, and zucchinis to the pot. Season with salt, pepper, oregano, and any other seasonings to your liking. Stir well and add a top. Reduce heat to medium and simmer for 40 minutes. Check the water level during occasional stirs; it should remain a thick texture.
Add a sprinkle of lemon juice before serving with croutons and parmesan cheese.
Enjoy!