Stone Soup Activities for Kids

I don’t know why I was thinking about this the other day, but one of my favorite times at my daughter’s preschool was when all the families were invited to make stone soup. Stone Soup is a classic story (and there are actually a few different books that tell it from different authors) but the idea is that no one wants to share what they have until someone suggests making stone soup, and then everyone adds what they have to make the soup better, ultimately creating a lovely meal for all to share.

There’s a short version of the story you can print out from Education.com if you don’t have the book version handy.

We literally did this by every family bringing something to add (our contribution was multi-colored carrots), and Rainy Day Mum has a post about doing this with her kiddo, though it’s more fun to do as a group. You can use the “recipe” in the version of the book you read or just have everyone bring a vegetable. They also used a potato as their stone; I think we had a real stone that had been washed and wrapped in foil.

Here’s another recipe from Primary Playground. They also have a free printable coloring page on Teachers Pay Teachers where kids can color in the items that are in their soup. There’s also a paid set of printables on how to make soup with a little book and sequencing activities, which you can use to make soup in class or at home.

Use the science activity from Books and Giggles to make a prediction as to whether soup with a stone in it will taste different from regular soup. This requires two pots but you can start it all in one pot then add some to another pot with a stone in it.

Mrs. Albanese’s Class has free printable vegetable cards you can use when talking about stone soup (and if you don’t want to make real soup in the classroom you can use them for storytelling along with play vegetables).

Susan Jones on Teachers Pay Teachers has a nice set of worksheets kids can use to compare and contrast different versions of the story, make a book about their own soup and more. Check out her blog post about it for all the details.

Do you use stone soup in the classroom or at home? I’d love to hear how you do it!

Gabon is a country in central Africa on the Equator, which is bordered by Equatorial Guinea, Cameroon and the Republic of the Congo, as well as the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Guinea. Let’s learn more.

Gabon Facts

Gabon has an area of 100,000 square miles, or 270,000 square kilometers and is home to about 2.3 million people. The capital and largest city is Libreville. Almost 90 percent of the land of Gabon is forest, and the nation has huge biodiversity.

The original inhabitants of Gabon were Bambenga, and the Kingdom of Orungu was established there in the 1700s, and France colonized the area in the later 19th century. Gabon gained its independence in 1960.

The official language is French and about 95 percent of the population is part of the Bantu ethnic groups. The majority of people are Christian.

Gabon comes from the Portuguese word gabao, which means hooded cloak. Portuguese explorers in the 1470s used the term to refer to the Komo river estuary, which they said resembled a cloak. Eventually the name spread to cover the whole region.

Gabon is a presidential republic with a legislature, though there have been many disputed elections and, in 2023, a military coup.

Gabon National Symbols

The Gabon flag consists of three horizontal stripes, in green, yellow and blue. The flag was adopted in 1960.

The national anthem is “La Concorde,” and it was written and adopted in 1960 as well.

The coat of arms features a ship on a shield with the same colors as the flag, with three yellow circles in the green section. Above the crest is a large tree, and the crest is flanked by black panthers. The motto, which translated to English is “unity, work, justice,” is below the shield, among the roots of the tree. The slogan that translates to “we shall go forward together” hang around the tree.

I couldn’t find any official national animals or plants, but black panthers are considered a national symbol because of their use on the coat of arms.

Gabon Learning Activities

Did you know black panthers aren’t a distinct species? In Africa they are leopards, but in other areas black panthers are actually cheetahs, bobcats, lynx or other big cats. Learn more about the animals of Gabon at A to Z Animals.

Check out Monts de Cristal, or the Crystal Mountains, home to a large diversity of wildlife (including lots of butterflies) and a large national park. There’s lots of great pictures on that page.

Adventures in a Messy Life has a little Gabon unit study that includes links to some videos, a recipe for African beignets, and notebooking pages available for purchase that you can use for any country in Africa.

Check out this video with interesting facts about Gabon from The African Script.

Find more resources for teaching about Gabon at Teachers Pay Teachers.

Learn more about traditional foods in Gabon from Chef’s Pencil, and check out this recipe for what’s considered the national dish of Gabon, poulet Nyembwe, a chicken dish made with red palm oil (which is what the dish is named for).

Have you read?

Gabon Facts

Gabon National Symbols

Gabon Learning Activities

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