Traditions Reimagined: ROCS Souper Heroes

One of ROCS’ most beloved traditions is Stone Soup, when our families gather to create a sumptuous veggie soup, and a feast to share together. This year, it was necessary to reimagine Stone Soup; we continued the spirit of this community-sharing feast by holding a food drive to benefit Clintonville Beechwold Community Resources Center (CRC) and celebrate Red Oak’s fifth year by collecting 500 food items!

The Chickadees and Robins, along with their teacher Michelle, led the school in this multi-disciplinary approach to learning and helping. The younger classes read culture-spanning versions of the story Stone Soup, a folktale with the moral that everyone benefits by contributing what they can to the greater good. In the story, when hungry travelers convince villagers to share small amounts of food to add to the soup for everyone to enjoy together, the villagers realize that sharing supports one another and contributes to their own happiness!  

As students compared and contrasted different versions of Stone Soup using Venn diagrams, and making their own recipes, they discussed how people in our community may be experiencing food insecurity, and need support. Some students knew about food banks and food pantries and suggested ROCS collect food to help. 

Two of the older students, Natalie and Molly, wrote an adaptation of the Stone Soup story in the form of a play for the younger classes to perform. The Chickadees and Robins learned about using big voices for reciting lines, listening to the narrator for clues on when to take their turn, crafting props, and the value of collaboration to create a performance together. The play served as the perfect way to tell the rest of the school about this social-justice project!

So, our ROCS “Souper Team” of students, staff, and families got to work! Families donated paper grocery bags, and the Chickadees and Robins wrote slogans on signs to attach to them asking for specific items the CRC needed. Each student brought home two grocery bags to fill or be shared with a neighbor, friend, or family so they could be Souper Heroes too!  

As the donations were brought in to school the Robins and Chickadees worked diligently to count, add, and record items each day. This was truly an application of math skills that was immediate, important to the children, and inspiring! The older classes cheered them on, and kept track of the total on the Soup Goal Post in the hallway, which has “soup” written in different languages. 

After the final day of collecting, the grand total stood at 949 food items! The staff added one final push to get us to a nice even 1,000, which was double the original goal! The Chickadees and Robins cheered with excitement!  All the bird group classes-- Herons, Orioles, Starlings, Chickadees, and Robins-- helped to bring bags to the curb outside the building. Parent volunteers drove the bags of food to the Clintonville Beechwold Resource Center to deliver them.  

The Herons made a sign thanking the Chickadees and Robins for their hard work, and the whole school had pajama and hot chocolate days to celebrate.  

A very special thank you to all the families who participated, and especially to Michelle, who organized this school-wide effort. It was a beautiful way to honor the spirit of Stone Soup and help our larger community. In the final words of the play our students performed: “When we work together, great things happen!”  

-Maureen Alley & Michelle McNabb, ROCS Educators