Bone Soup

 For the past 4 years I have read "Bone Soup" by Cambria Evans to Pumpkinbutt's class on Halloween.  The past 2 years have been difficult to make it happen due to one teacher saying "Halloween isn't a real holiday"  and another teacher afraid someone would get offended.  But after begging, pleading and clearance from the principal the tradition has prevailed.
Let me clarify here... I don't just read them the story, there is a whole performance involved and a treat at the end. The story is a Halloween version of "Stone Soup" with imported stewed eyeballs, bat wings and frog legs, to name some of the ingredients. The main character, a skeleton-type cutie named Finnigin, is a wanderer in search of a Halloween feast.

Finnigin places a dry old bone (a magic bone!) in the town's largest cauldron and draws out the reluctant townscreatures to contribute to the soup. As each ingredient is placed in the soup in the story, I add the same item into a large plastic cauldron.   I made all the ingredient's packaging to look just like they do in the book.

With Imported Stewed Eyeballs, the soup becomes tasty...

But what flavor Bat Wings add!

 With the addition of Frog Legs, the soup is fit for a king!

And with a final dusting of slime and sludge (plastic spiders, flies, other creepy crawlies)  the soup is declared ready!

This year, instead of giving them a large cookie bone or goodie bag containing Bone Soup type items when the story is over, I decided to take it up a notch....I had them build their own Bone Soup in an edible chocolate cauldron as the story was read!

Each kid got a little zombie-hand bag of edibles... Eyes, batwings (pumpkin spice candy melt molds of bats), gummy frogs, Halloween colored sugar sprinkles with a small candy bug (slime and sludge) and of course a magic bone (a small candy sprinkle bone).

I made the cauldron cakes from this recipe.  Mine did not turn out near as cute as hers!

Here are a few of the kid's Bone Soup creations!:

This year's presentation went really well.  As I told the story and directed the kids on what to open and add next to their mini cauldrons, PB took care of the large cauldron and it's soup contents. 

And best of all, the kids and PB had a great time.  His school does not allow but a couple of parties each school year and Halloween gets bumped usually.  I try my best to make sure the kids get something since I think it's the best and most important holiday there is. (sorry Christmas...you are second place.)

Next year will be the last year we get to do Bone Soup as PB will be in 5th grade...have to make it extra spooktacular! 

As a side note, I highly recommend everyone who loves Halloween to own this book, it is a staple and has become a tradition that PB and I look forward to reading each season.