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Fall Pumpkin Soup with Children

We have been so busy with the summer travels and outdoor exploration that we didn’t notice Fall is coming! To me, Fall time means soup and I’m excited to make Fall Pumpkin Soup with my Children. I have also added a couple of the pumpkin extension activities we added to this soup making adventure and a ton of great other resources! Happy Fall!

Fall Pumpkin Soup with Children

Pumpkin Soup

There are many pumpkin soup recipes out there, but I really liked the recipe from Food Network mostly because it is served in the individual pumpkins. I would not recommend starting this recipe to close to dinner time if you have toddlers helping you. You want to be sure to give extra time for exploration and slow work. We started this recipe around 11 am and chose to heat up our pumpkins close to dinner time to be sure I didn’t rush the kid through all the lessons that come with cooking in the kitchen.

We have had a couple activities this summer that have allowed our inner scientist to come out. One big one is our garden and the other is the unbelievable amount of mushrooms we saw this year in our yard! The first thing my kids asked when I told them we were going to make pumpkin soup out of the pumpkins taking over our kitchen was, “Can we cut them open and see what’s inside?!?”. I do love their adventurous spirits! So first on the list of making fall pumpkins soup with children is exploration.

Exploration

I like to talk my way through recipes with the children. More of a hands on type learning. We have added the word hypothesis to our everyday language. I asked the children what they thought was inside the pumpkin before we started on the recipe. We have had this same kind of conversation with other vegetables like acorn squash and butternut squash. Not to surprising they guessed seeds would be inside.

It is amazing to watch children exploring new things. Check out our Fall Pumpkin Soup with Children post at Child Led Life for more ideas on kids in the kitchen.

Next, we did a lot of inspection and feel of the inside contents. Samuel has never been very adventurous as far as different feels so he chooses to use a spoon most of the time and that is just fine. Avalyn will dig right in. Here she is inspecting a seed. So great to take time to let them explore during cooking.

Scooping

Fall Pumpkin Soup with Children

Our recipe asked us to scoop out all the contents of the pumpkin like we would a jack-o-lantern. The kids worked with this for a bit, but after a while I ended up getting in there and making sure everything was out.

Measuring

Fall Pumpkin Soup with Children

I love being able to teach my children in the kitchen. The Fall Pumpkin Soup recipe called for a hand full of wonderful fall spices to be mixed together. Samuel started by finding the correct measuring spoon then adding the amount to a bowl. Here we took the time to notice how 1 tsp is bigger than 1/2 tsp which is bigger than 1/4 tsp. Just having them hear the terminology is helping them learn!

Fall Pumpkin Soup with Children

Avalyn then mixed those ingredients together to create a spice blend that has us feeling like turning on the fireplace and finding our sweatshirts!

Fall Pumpkin Soup with Children

Then the kids sprinkled the spices inside our pumpkins before the smaller pumpkins headed to the oven for roasting.

Cutting

Fall Pumpkin Soup with Children

After our smaller pumpkins were in the oven, we started working on cutting our bigger pumpkin for the soup. This started to get a little dicey (no pun intended) so I chose to put the camera down here and work with the kids on their knife skills. Both of my kids are comfortable with pairing knives, but typically will choose to use a butter knife for most tasks. Pumpkins are a little harder to handle so you will probably need to give a little assistance here.

Fall Pumpkin Soup with Children

I ended up finishing the soup up on my own. My children are good sports, but there is only so much cooking excitement they can handle! The soup was delicious! Very easy to put together and plenty in this recipe to give my husband left overs for lunch and have extra for my own lunch the next day. Love it!

Pumpkin Extension Activities

I have a couple extra fun activities to add on to your Fall Pumpkin Soup with Children recipe.

Roasted Pumpkin Seeds

Fall Pumpkin Soup with Children

I have been making roasted pumpkin seed for as long as I can remember. So great to use as much of a food as you can. Here’s how I make mine.

I like to add all the insides of the pumpkin to a colander and rinse the seeds while removing all the pumpkin guts to a separate bowl. Once you have removed and rinsed all the seeds, lay them in one layer on a cookie sheet. I like to add sea salt to mine before I cook them. Roast them at 350 degrees for 20-30 minutes. I usually start with 20 minutes and see how they look. You want them to be all dried out and a little crispy. That’s it! Healthy snack everyone will love!

Feed the Chickens/Compost

Fall Pumpkin Soup with Children Feed the Chickens

We love our backyard chickens and love giving them our kitchen scraps. They go crazy over this stuff! If you don’t have backyard chickens you can always add this to your compost bin.

Pumpkin Tops Art Stamps

Fall Pumpkin Soup with Children Art StampsThe recipe called for us to add the tops of the pumpkins back on the roasting pumpkins for cooking, but I chose to tent them with aluminum foil instead. I saved the pumpkin tops to do a fun little art stamp project with the kids. We did something similar around Mother’s Day with apples and celery! It is a fun way to explore.

Life Cycle of a Pumpkin

I sure do love free and Montessori for Everyone has a free Pumpkin Life Cycle Printable. Glad to add this to our  growing set of cards!

Pumpkin Resources

Natural Beach Living Fall Pumpkin Kinder Days with many wonderful fall themed ideas.

Fall Pumpkin Soup with Children

Living Montessori Now has a great post on pumpkin ideas and a pumpkin unit round up.

Montessori Work Jobs has Free Pumpkin Nomenclature Cards.

Looking for More Ideas for Children in the Kitchen?

One of our top posts!  Montessori Kitchen: Our Children Love to Cook

Child's Kitchen

Kids in the Kitchen is my all time favorite books to help children work in the kitchen!

Kids in the Kitchen

 

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