Writing about Art Soup

After Arcimboldo

Mira has been doing a course using nature for some really cool activities; we decided to try out one of them today - to great effect! Children worked in 3 groups, each choosing someone to lie down on the ground. The rest of the group then hunted for sticks to make an outline of the body. Then, with the body out of the way, they filled the outline with different parts of plants: leaves, petals, seeds and so on.

With bad weather predicted for the early part of the week, our Arcimboldo-inspired natural art will probably be scattered (quite literally) to the four winds. Luckily we made a photographic record for you to enjoy.

Art Soup

To make ART SOUP, all you need is a classroom full of enthusiastic six and seven year-olds and a basket of different vegetables.

First use your choice of sliced vegetables to make a face. Admire it, change the expression, clamour to have it photographed. It is OK to taste as you work! (Click on each child's blog to see the picture they made).

Next, wash the vegetables (after all that tasting!) taking care to remove any that might be more suitable for a salad (in our case radishes and cucumber).

Put the vegetables into two huge saucepans, each with a litre of water and two child-sized pinches of salt.

Set to simmer in the staff-room kitchen.

When the delicious smell of cooking wafts all the way along the corridor and up the stairs to Class 2i, it is probably ready.

Bring the saucepan into the classroom and blend the soup with the help of 'Brenda-the-Blender'. It is essential that everyone has a turn at using the blender - but do make sure that, however exciting it is, before the motor is switched on, the head (of the blender!) is submerged.....the teacher can only stand being splattered with near-boiling soup so often!

Once the soup is smooth, serve.

Delicious ART SOUP. Thoroughly recommended.




Here's the story:

Umar said, “Mira cut up all the vegetables.”

Max said, “We did not put the radishes in the soup.”

Fiona said, “ We put the radishes and cucumber together to make a salad.”

Dangi said, “ We had potatoes. We added salt and water to make the soup.”

There were other vegetables in the soup as well. There were carrots, cauliflower and celery. 18 children said that the tomatoes went into the soup but 6 said that they did not.

Tanmay told us that 2i went to the staff room to cook it.

After the cooking Per said we put the ART SOUP in a machine to mix it.

Some people ate the ART SOUP. Patricia did not.

Everyone in Class 2i helped to make the ART SOUP.

Edible Art

As part of their Unit of Inquiry into "How we share the planet", Our World of Plants, students in Class 2i created pictures out of fruits and vegetables. Read about their work on each student's blog.

Before the start of this lesson, children were invited to try and guess what they would be doing in art. They were given some clues; that they would not use pencils, paint or crayons; that there would be no need for paper, scissors or glue; that they might even get to nibble their work along the way....

I love the creative way in which everyone used the different vegetables and fruits. Who would have imagined fennel slices for a smiley mouth or celery leaves for hair? And who would have imagined what we would get to eat the following day for our lunch? Click on the link to ART SOUP......