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!
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.
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
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
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!
Avalyn then mixed those ingredients together to create a spice blend that has us feeling like turning on the fireplace and finding our sweatshirts!
Then the kids sprinkled the spices inside our pumpkins before the smaller pumpkins headed to the oven for roasting.
Cutting
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.
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
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
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
The 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.
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
Kids in the Kitchen is my all time favorite books to help children work in the kitchen!
This Post Was Featured On:
This post was created in support for my co-blogging home at Christian Montessori Network. Please hop over there and find all that God is calling us to do and follow our Pinterest board below!
Follow Christian Montessori Network’s board Christian Montessori (Blog) on Pinterest.
I am excited to have you here and look forward to chatting with you on any of our social networks on Facebook, G+ and Pinterst.
23 Page Montessori Inspired Infant and Toddler Setup PDF FREE! To receive this FREE PDF please compete the contact here form with your request and the PDF will be emailed to you!
Do you need affordable help setting up your Montessori-inspired environment? Contact me! Are you looking for affordable Montessori lessons and activities? I highly recommend Lisa Nolan’s affordable online programs! Her 0-24 program is here, her 2-3 program is here, her 4-5 program is here, and her 6-9 program is here.
Please feel free to check out my favorite Montessori books here and in my store on Amazon.com. If you click on any of the books or Montessori programs (and make a purchase) I get a small commission. This helps fund Montessori materials, activities, and books I can get for my family. A big THANK YOU for my family to yours in advance of any purchases you make!
[contact-form][contact-field label=’Name’ type=’name’ required=’1’/][contact-field label=’Email’ type=’email’ required=’1’/][contact-field label=’Website’ type=’url’/][contact-field label=’Comment’ type=’textarea’ required=’1’/][/contact-form]
Looks like you all had a lovely time making pumpkin soup while learning about pumpkins and cooking.
I really like how you incorporate extra activities around a central life theme. It certainly makes for a memorable learning experience.
I have never actually had pumpkin soup. I am, however, a huge fan of pumpkin pie 🙂
Thank you, Sheila! We make homemade pumpkin pie too. Delicious! Thank you for stopping by.
Great ideas and I love all the pix! Ready for Fall now 🙂
I am too! It has been 90 degrees here every day. I am so excited for cooler weather.
How fun! My nephews would love this.
We had a lot of fun, Ashley! And we made puree out of some of the extra pumpkin to make pancakes! I bet your nephews would like those too. Thank you so much for stopping by!
I love the pumpkin soup recipe and hands-on learning activity that you created for your children. This is such a wonderful way to foster a love for cooking and kitchen safety at a young age.
Thank you, Jill! We love having the kids in the kitchen with us! Thank you for stopping by.
Wow! This looks like so much fun. I think we’ll have to wait until next year because I tried baking with the kiddos last week and Master J just plain wasn’t interested and Miss E really didn’t get it.
I’m pinning and Evernoting this so I can come back to it though.
Thank you for sharing! The more they are around it the more fun they will have. Samuel has days he just doesn’t want to participate and that is ok. They are still watching. 🙂
Lucky kids learning where healthy food comes from. I pinned two of your images to my pumpkin Pinterest board. I ate 8 sugar pumpkins last winter and hope to acquire 12 from the same grower this year. Some pumpkins actually came up in the compost and grew up the fence, but I guess it got too hot for them as they didn’t make it.
That is awesome! After the chickens were done with our pumpkins we threw the rest in the compost. I hope they grow. We have a good amount of shade which makes me worry they won’t get enough sun. Thank you so much for sharing. Great to have you here, Gail!
So much fun, I miss doing these things with my sons… thanks for sharing at the #WWDParty.
Thank you for stopping by! Having kids in the kitchen is a lot of fun. And their enthusiasm is well worth the effort. 🙂
Yum I love pumpkin soup. Thanks for joining in the #Parenting PinitParty
We do too! Thank you for hosting a great linky party. I appreciate you stopping by.
I’ve never heard of pumpkin soup, we’ll have to try with my son. Thanks for linking up at the Thoughtful Spot Weekly Blog Hop! We hope you stop by again next week!
Thank you, Samantha! This is the first time we have made it in the pumpkins. The kids had a lot of fun with this recipe! Great to have you here and we love the Thoughtful Spot Blog Hop.
Lots of family fun happens in the kitchen, thanks for sharing at the #WWDParty!
Great to have you here, Anitonette! We love working in the kitchen.