Nothing like a hot bowl of stone soup

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For some reason, I’m only just now getting around to reading Stone Soup with my kids. And honestly? The timing couldn’t have been better.

We’d been stuck in the house for two straight weeks with the flu. Everybody was tired, cranky, and all the way over each other. There were a lot of tears, a lot of yelling, and a lot of teasing. Patience was low. Grace was running on fumes.

But this book? It did a little something.

Stone Soup by Jon J. Muth

We read the version by Jon J. Muth, set in China. Three monks arrive in a village looking for something to eat, but every door is shut tight. The villagers, worn down by years of famine and war, don’t trust strangers or each other.

So the monks do something unexpected. They build a fire in the center of the village and announce they’re making stone soup.

A curious little girl stops to watch. She asks questions. They mention they could use a bigger pot, so she brings one from her mother. Water goes in. Stones go in. The villagers gather, watching closely. Then the monks casually mention how nice the soup would be with salt and pepper. Someone brings some. Then carrots. Then cabbage. Mushrooms. Onions.

Little by little, everyone contributes.

By the time the soup is ready, the whole village has changed. People are talking again. Laughing. Sharing. The soup feeds more than just hunger.

After we finished the book, the conversation naturally shifted to what we already had in the kitchen and whether we could pull off our own version.

So we did.

Using the story as our guide, I let the kids choose the ingredients, only what we already had. That meant ravioli instead of dumplings and baby carrots instead of whole ones. I love an activity where you don’t have to go out and buy anything. We built a fire out back and cooked the soup right over it.

And let me tell you, sitting outside in the cold, huddled around a fire, eating bowls of soup we made together felt like the reset we didn’t know we needed.

Not every homeschool moment is pretty. But every once in a while, a simple story and a pot of soup do exactly what they’re supposed to do and bring everybody back to each other.

Let’s see how long it lasts.