Cinco de Mayo Spice Soup

(Open Ended Play)

A simple sensory play to introduce Cinco de Mayo! We knew nothing about Cinco de Mayo before this project. We also have never been exposed to it in reality. This was merely our way to try celebrate as foreigner and to ride along the festivity, oh my it was so much fun!

Materials:

-a laddle

-a big bowl

-3 glass jars

-red and green food coloring

-a bulb of garlic

-onions

-1 tsp each: flour, whole blackpepper, cumin, corriander

-2 sticks of cinnamon

-3 handprints in red, white and green color paper

-4 containers for spices

-water

-a tray

Instruction:

-add to each glass jar: water+red food coloring, water+flour, water +green food coloring

-add each spice on container

-put handprint papers in the bowl, set all remaining items on the tray as shown in the picture

-present materials to your toddler

We began with me asking colors of the handprint paper by lifting them up one by one, and she said each of their color. “Red,” “White,” “Green,” as I tossed each one away until the bowl are empty and removed the bowl, glass jars and laddle along to the side.

She could focus on the dried spices. I gave an example how to sniff which she followed. I let her explore freely afterwards. She tried to squeeze the bulb of garlic, lifted up the cinnamon and poke the garlic bulb using it.

She interested so much with the cumin powder. She sprinkled much, if not all, on the garlic bulb, to be followed by sprinkle whole blackpepper and corriander seeds.

I then introduced her with the glass jars and the bowl. I let her explore freely. She began to pour the red, white and green water from the glass jars into the bowl. Her reaction with how those 3 colors changed into brown was priceless! I think she saw it as magic. She was kind of frowned, perhaps questioning where the red color went, before moving on plainly eventually.

She pinched and sprinkled spices one by one before finally poured the spices into the bowl. She stirred using the cinnamon bark. She used the ladle to spoon and pour her soup into the jars and containers. Some counting play also took part: counting each seeds of coriander and blackpepper. That’s a lot of counting for sure.

Add lots of pouring back and forth between jars and bowl, she spent really long time doing this Cinco de Mayo spice soup.

#toddler #play #cincodemayo #mexico #soup