The Gingerbread Man

Run, Run as fast as you can! You can't catch me I'm the gingerbread man!

This is another of my favorite stories. My daughters and I still pretend to be the gingerbread man whenever we run (They are 5 and 3 so this is still fun. I might cry the day this stops being fun). I usually teach this story after Thanksgiving and before the Christmas unit. It is a good unit for between Thanksgiving and Christmas and I feel every child should know this story!

The vocabulary focus for this unit was verbs, verbs, verbs. I did have some nouns, but I really focused on the action words from the story. Here is my list:
old woman, old man, boy, gingerbread man, farmers, bear, wolf, fox, gingerbread house, cookie cutters, eat, bake, decorate, run, stir, roll, rest, and shout.

Here is the link to the vocab I used. It is on Google Drive. It does not have the characters, sorry.

Cookie cutter, bake, decorate and rest turned out to be the most difficult for my kiddos.

To kick of the unit, I hid the characters in pockets. Each kiddo pulled out a character and named it. Then we talked about (well tried to talk about) what story it could be. The gingerbread man kind of gave it away! Then we read the story and I set out the characters as they appeared in the story. I read the story twice this day. To make my puppets, I simply scanned the pages from the book. I really wanted the characters to look the same. I did use an old man and old woman from previous made set because there weren't any good pics in the book of the old man and old woman.

The next day the kiddos acted out the story! What fun! Everyone got a turn to be the gingerbread man and the fox. Now, in the version I read, the gingerbread man does not cross a river. 

The kiddos and I made gingerbread playdough. This is your basic playdough recipe with cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves added for scent and coloring. I'm sorry, I didn't measure just had fun shaking the ingredients in the bowl! The kiddos love to shake :) **Note you will  not need any food coloring for this recipe. 

The basic playdough recipe is 

1 cup flour                                        1 cup water
2 tsp. cream of tartar                         2 Tbsp. cooking oil
1/2 cup salt                                      food coloring
In heavy saucepan, mix dry ingredients.  Add water, oil and food coloring.  Cook 3 min. or until mixture pulls away from side of pan.  Knead slightly in hands when cool.  Put in a ziplock bag.

My favorite part of this lesson is of course making gingerbread man cookies!! This lesson I really focused on the verbs. Stir, roll, cut, bake, run away, decorate. In the morning we made the cookies. Then those naughty cookies ran away!! In each location the cookies left us a clue as to where to run next.
We used a bag recipe. Betty Crocker makes a good bag mix.
**Note: if you plan on rolling out the cookies to make gingerbread men, chill the dough for at least 20 minutes. It will roll so much nicer. Trust me. I always forget.

Here is an example of one of my clues:

Run, run as fast as you can you can't catch me I'm the gingerbread man! I ran to the teacher you see on Tuesdays and Thursdays. (this was their speech teacher.)

I had about 5 clues. We finally found the naughty cookies in the audiology room in the sound booth. I forgot to take pictures sorry!!

The next day we acted out the story again. Each kiddo pretending to be a different character. Then for the big grand finale, we went into another class and acted the story out for them! What fun. Again, I forgot to take pictures. Sorry, I was to busy being the narrator.

The characters in the version I read wear clothes and don't look anything like the real animals. So one day we sorted bears, wolves, foxes and cookies. I set out the character puppets and had  stack of pictures. Each kiddo took turns drawing a card and telling me what it was.
T: What is it?
S: It is a bear.

The language focus here was It.

Here is the link to the pictures I used. Let me know if there are any issues accessing the link. It is on Google Drive.

For our last big lesson we read "Gingerbread Baby" and focused on the house. All of my students wanted to call it a gingerbread man house! We really focused on just the gingerbread house. So of course we made gingerbread houses! In the next post, I will outline how we made these super easy, non-edible houses. I also remembered to take a ton of pictures!

Little Red Hen

I see I have fallen behind once again. Grrrr....one day I will get organized, I promise. Maybe next semester when I have a student teacher...

So this past week we focused on the Little Red Hen. I love this story,  mostly because I get to bake bread at the end of the unit :)

The main focus of this unit was the retelling of the story. I wanted the kiddos to learn the language in the story, "who will help?" "Not I!"

To kick off the unit, I put the pictures from the story in my large pockets (it so much more exciting to hide stuff in pockets than to just hand it to the kiddos! I can't tell you how much I use those simple pockets!!) Each kiddo pulled out a picture from the story and we brainstormed what it could be from. My story had a hen, a cat, a dog and a goose. We called it a duck though. Each of these picture had magnets attached to the back. I put the pictures on the side of my desk for the kiddos to retell the story. The kiddos had fun retelling the story to each other. I LOVED hearing the words from the story!

I found my printables from sparkelbox, the link can be found here.



Kizclub.com has some great pictures, the link can be found here. The pictures can be printed in either black or white. 

After reading through the story a few times, I had the kiddos act it out. Each kiddo was given a mask to pretend to be a character from the story. I was the storyteller and the kiddos just needed to say the famous lines! They had such fun. The mask were printed from sparklebox at the above link.  I also gave each kiddo a mask to make and take home with the hopes of each kiddo acting out the story at home!

Then everyone made a red hen puppet, as you can see, not all the hens were red!

Of course, last but not least was baking bread! This is my favorite day. I love bread, mmmm...with lots of butter! I have a no yeast, no knead recipe that works pretty well with the kiddos. We did knead the dough a bit, just because the little red hen did! The link to the recipe can be found here. I will say, we added 1 tsp. of salt to the recipe and it made a big difference. It needs to bake for 40 mins so plan accordingly.

Mmmmm...everyone ate it too!! Love the smell of bread baking.