School-aged children will practice engaging their senses and learn a useful and calming breathing technique using this bowl of soup activity. This is a great activity to practice cutting and other motor skills, imaginative play, and building strong coping techniques. We will create our own warm bowls of soup using construction paper, using our senses of touch, taste, and smell along the way to connect with the ingredients we include, and will leave the activity having a cool and unique craft and a new coping skill to use.
Supplies:
Construction paper (brown, orange, green, red, and any color you want)
One larger bowl, one slightly smaller bowl
Pencil
Scissors
Black marker
Other makers to add design to rim of the bowl
Tape or Glue
Your Imagination!
Activity Steps:
Engage your senses and imagination, create a fun craft, and practice some wellness with Mindfulness Soup! This soup will help us remember warm, comforting, and cozy memories when we are feeling stressed, nervous and anxious. It also will give us a new tool to help us take deep breaths by smelling how yummy our soup is and then blowing it off to cool it down. During our activity, you will also get to use your imagination to engage your sense of touch, taste, smell and touch! This is great for school-aged kids, adolescents, and adults alike looking for an interesting activity that helps you get more in touch with your mind and body and recenter when things feel challenging, overwhelming, and stressful!
Before you get started, make sure to ask a guardian for permission or help when using scissors. And have a clear craft space that is ready with all of the materials we will need!
Making your Bowl:
Step 1: First, choose the color of construction paper that you want to use for your bowl. I chose pink for mine. Lay it down on the flat surface and put your large bowl upside down on the paper.
Using your pencil, trace around the bowl on the paper, making a circle on the page that you can cut out. After making sure you have permission to use scissors or asking for help if you need it, cut out your circle.
Step 2: Next, choose the color of construction paper that you want the broth (the liquid part of the soup) to be. I chose yellow for mine. Again, lay the paper down on the flat surface, and this time put your smaller bowl upside down on the paper.
Using your pencil, trace around the bowl to create a smaller circle for you to cut out. Go ahead and cut it out.
Step 3: Now, taking your tape or glue, attach the smaller circle (broth) to the center of the larger circle (your bowl). If you are using tape, you can make tape rolls, by connecting one edge of your strip of tape to the other so that it is a round shape with the sticky side out. Otherwise, you can just put glue on the back of the smaller circle and press it down onto the larger circle.
Step 4: If you have any colorful markers available, you can now take a moment to draw a design on the rim of the bowl you just made. The rim of a bowl is the flat edge around the top of the bowl. This is the area of the larger circle that is still showing after you put on the smaller circle. I used a black maker and drew swirls all around the rim of mine with yellow and purple polka dots around it. But, you can draw hearts, stars, squiggles, stripes, whatever you want! And, you can use whatever color or colors you have available to do this!
Making your Vegetables:
Step 5: Now, we are going to draw and cut out the shapes of the vegetables we want to have in our soup. We will want to include 4 vegetables. It is important to eat some vegetables every single day in order to get all of the wonderful vitamins and nutrients that they have to help our bodies grow healthy and strong! For my bowl, I am going to include potatoes, carrots, peppers, and celery, so I will need brown, orange, red, and green construction paper. Your soup can have the same vegetables as mine or you can include your own favorite vegetables (like broccoli, corn, mushrooms, or zucchini), but it might change what color paper you need! So, go ahead and grab what color paper you want for your vegetables now.
Potato
Step 6: To start, I am going to make a potato. When you are drawing your vegetables, you don’t want to make them too big, or they might not all fit into your bowl of soup! To draw a potato, it is a sort of silly shape. You can feel free to draw it using your memory and own imagination to design what your potato might look like. But, if you want some help in figuring out what is a good shape, you can draw the number 8 that is the size that you want your potato and erase the middle section, so that you just have the outline. When you have your shape drawn on the construction paper, you can cut it out.
Step 7: Using my black marker now, I am going to add detail to my potato. So, I am going to draw an outline of the shape on the inside of the cut-out potato, and add little curved lines in the middle to look like the bumps on the potato.
Step 8: When you are done with that, flip the cut-out of your vegetable over. Now, close your eyes and I want you to imagine eating a potato. What is a word you would use to describe the taste? Once you have it, write it on the backside of your potato. Now close your eyes again! Imagine eating that potato again and think of a word to describe the texture or feeling it has when you eat it! Write that on the back of the potato cut-out. Finally, close your eyes and imagine holding the potato. Think of a word to describe what it feels like. Go ahead and write that one down too! The words I wrote were: “rustic” “mushy”, and “dusty”.
Step 9: When you have all of the words written down, it is time to add the potato to your bowl of soup. If you are using glue, make sure you are looking at the side with the words facing UP, and put a little line of glue just at the very top of the potato so that when you put it in the bowl, you can still flip it up and read the words.
If you are using tape, put the potato in the bowl with the words facing DOWN and put a little piece of tape at the top of the potato, so that you can also still flip it and read the words.
Carrot
Step 10: Now, let’s make the carrot. Using my orange construction paper, I am going to draw the shape of a carrot. To me, it looks like a triangle with curved edges instead of pointy edges and a small bunch of leaves, or a tuft of leaves, at the top that looks like a crown. When you have your shape drawn, go ahead and cut it out.
Step 11: Using my black marker now, I am going to add detail to my carrot. So, I am going to draw an outline of the shape on the inside of the cut-out carrot, and add little lines horizontally (or going side to side) in the middle to look like lines you see on real life carrots.
Step 12: When you are done with that, flip the cut-out of your vegetable over. Now, close your eyes and I want you to imagine eating a carrot. What is a word you would use to describe the taste? Once you have it, write it on the backside of your carrot. Now close your eyes again! Imagine eating that carrot again and think of a word to describe the texture or feeling it has when you eat it! Write that on the back of the carrot cut-out. Finally, close your eyes and imagine holding the carrot. Think of a word to describe what it feels like. Go ahead and write that one down too! I wrote “sweet”, “crunchy”, and “bumpy” for my 3 words!
Step 13: When you have all of the words written down, it is time to add the carrot to your bowl of soup. If you are using glue, make sure you are looking at the side with the words facing UP, and put a little line of glue just at the very top of the carrot, near the leaves, so that when you put it in the bowl, you can still flip it up and read the words.
If you are using tape, put the carrot in the bowl with the words facing DOWN and put a little piece of tape at the top of the carrot, so that you can also still flip it and read the words.
Pepper
Step 14: Now, let’s make the pepper. Using my red construction paper, I am going to draw the shape of a pepper. To draw this, I am going to make a large C on my paper.
Then I am going to turn my paper around so that the C is backwards and leaving a little space between them, write another C.
Now I am going to make a curved line at the top and bottom of the shape to connect the forward and backward C’s. When you have your shape drawn, go ahead and cut it out!
Step 15: Using my black marker now, I am going to add detail to my pepper. So, I am going to draw an outline of the shape on the inside of the cut-out carrot, and add 2 lines on the inside, not connected to the corners, but going up and down between them, to make it look more 3-D.
Step 16: When you are done with that, flip the cut-out of your vegetable over. Now, close your eyes and I want you to imagine eating a pepper. What is a word you would use to describe the taste? Once you have it, write it on the backside of your pepper. Now close your eyes again! Imagine eating that pepper again and think of a word to describe the texture or feeling it has when you eat it! Write that on the back of the pepper cut-out. Finally, close your eyes and imagine holding the pepper. Think of a word to describe what it feels like. Go ahead and write that one down too! I wrote down “sweet”, “crisp”, and “smooth”.
Step 17: When you have all of the words written down, it is time to add the pepper to your bowl of soup. If you are using glue, make sure you are looking at the side with the words facing UP, and put a little line of glue just at the very top of the pepper, so that when you put it in the bowl, you can still flip it up and read the words.
If you are using tape, put the pepper in the bowl with the words facing DOWN and put a little piece of tape at the top of the pepper, so that you can also still flip it and read the words.
Celery
Step 18: Now, let’s make the celery. Using my green construction paper, I am going to draw the shape of celery. To draw this, I am going to draw a long, skinny rectangle, but for the smaller sides, one will be curved in and the other curved out. You can draw those curves as C’s too! When you have your shape drawn, go ahead and cut it out.
Step 19: Using my black marker now, I am going to add detail to my celery. So, I am going to draw an outline of the shape on the inside of the cut-out carrot, and add little lines going up and down in the middle to look like lines you see on celery.
Step 20: When you are done with that, flip the cut-out of your vegetable over. Now, close your eyes and I want you to imagine eating celery. What is a word you would use to describe the taste? Once you have it, write it on the backside of your celery. Now close your eyes again! Imagine eating that celery again and think of a word to describe the texture or feeling it has when you eat it! Write that on the back of the celery cut-out. Finally, close your eyes and imagine holding the celery. Think of a word to describe what it feels like. Go ahead and write that one down too! I wrote down “fresh”, “curved”, and “ribbed”.
Step 21: When you have all of the words written down, it is time to add the celery to your bowl of soup. If you are using glue, make sure you are looking at the side with the words facing UP, and put a little line of glue just at the very top of the celery going across right under where the C shape is on the paper you cut out, so that when you put it in the bowl, you can still flip it up and read the words.
If you are using tape, put the celery in the bowl with the words facing DOWN and put a little piece of tape at the top of the celery, so that you can also still flip it and read the words.
Soup Breathing Mindfulness Technique:
Step 22: Our bowl of soup is all done now! And now, we need to enjoy it! To start off, I want you to close your eyes and think of a really good memory that you have related to soup! It could be a time that you ate a yummy soup, you helped make soup, or you passed out soup at a soup kitchen! Whatever comes to mind! For me, every year when I was a kid, my mom would make a special kind of bean and vegetable soup that would be cooking all day long. By the time it was ready, we were all so excited to eat it because we had been smelling it all day, that no one talked at dinner because we were too busy eating and enjoying the soup!
Step 23: Do you have your memory? Ok, good! Now while you think of that memory, start to remember what the soup smelled like and tasted like. You can open your eyes now and look at the bowl of soup that you just made! Using the memory of your soup, let’s practice our soup breathing exercise. So we are going to take a deep breath in through your nose to smell the delicious soup. Then breathe out through your mouth to cool the hot soup down. Let’s do it again. Breathe in through your nose and smell the soup and out through your mouth to cool it down.
Step 24: Hopefully this breathing exercise and remembering those good memories will help you feel more calm and relaxed. When you do, go ahead and pretend to taste your soup and enjoy what you made!
Now that you have this really fun bowl of soup craft, you can keep it around you to do the soup breathing activity whenever you want to be reminded of the warm and cozy feelings that a hot bowl of soup brings but also whenever you need help relaxing, distressing, or calming down.
~By Molly G.