Stone Soup

Lisa Keathley
Winfield ES
2nd grade
General Education
One of my favorite childhood stories.Stone Soup is a great resource for grades Prek-5th grade. It's also a Accelerated Reader at a 3.9 reading level.As an adult, I didn't realize that the original story is rooted in European folklore. It can be traced back to France, Sweden, Russia, England, Belguim,and others.
The most popular version starts the soup with stones. In the Korean culture the story is about a magic cake tree. Then in the Philippines the story is about a bill-paying hat. And in China the story is about tricksters who disperse enlightenment in leu of personal gain. Three deities impart health, wealth, and prosperity who infiltrates themselves into three monks, The artwork in the story is designed to have specific meanings. For example, the color yellow represents royalty. The village had endured a lot of hardships and was very distrustful of anyone. But, the deities were able to get the villagers out of their homes due to their curiousity and got them to work together to make stone soup. At the end, everyone was eating, singing, telling stories way into the night.
There's many ways this story can be used in a classroom. The different versions can be compared and contrasted. It can be utilized in teaching folklore from different regions and discover the meanings or lessons in each of the stories. It can be used with character building since it describes how all the people worked together to accomplish the task of making soup.