Tuesday, December 25, 2007

Stone Soup: A Portuguese Fable Acted Out

We acted out the story of Stone Soup, a Portuguese fable. Alex from France played the stranger passing through a small poor village. He knocked on every door and asked for a place to sleep and some food to eat. After each villager (student) turned him away, he pulled a small stone from his pocket and a cooking pot from his coat. He filled the pot with water and set it on a fire he made in the centre of the village. As the water boiled, the villagers, one by one, were drawn out of curiosity to ask him, "What are you doing?" He told each one that he was making a delicious stone soup...and that it would taste better with one more item, maybe a carrot...which was given by the first onlooker. The next person was willing to add a potato...and on and on...until the pot was filled with one ingredient from every villager. It turned out to be an amazingly tasty soup, which he shared with all of the villagers.
After our kitchen "English Lesson" bubbled over with cooking verbs and kitchen culinary vocabulary, my students decided to share our stone soup with the needy people which go to eat at the Salvation Army Kitchen each noon hour. (We removed the stone...Angelica from Columbia kept it...for soup starter.) The following day, a few of my students left the classroom early to serve the soup at the soup kitchen.
If you want to read the whole story...go online and "google": Stone Soup/Portuguese Fable. This is only one of the many versions of this ancient tale from various countries.
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