February Week 3
We continued our Paul Galdone author study this week, and read his version of The Gingerbread Boy.
We also read The Gingerbread Man by Jim Aylesworth.
Next we read one of my favorites, Gingerbread Baby by Jan Brett.
In this version, instead of the Gingerbread Baby being eaten at the end, he is made a Gingerbread House to live in.
If I Were a Gingerbread Boy/Girl
The kids wrote about what kind of gingerbread boy or girl they would be.
The templates for these are available for free on TpT.
Story Retelling
We made simple popsicle stick puppets together (templates here), and I created a stage from a box.
This is honestly my first true attempt at doing puppetry and plays with children. I am taking Sally Haughey's dramatic arts class through her website, Fairy Dust Teaching, and I highly recommend it! This is the 4th online course I've taken with her. Truly valuable stuff.
For a couple days I told the whole story with puppets (and without the book) by myself. The next few days, I had kids volunteer to be characters, and I narrated. On Friday, I heard the kids retelling the entire story in the reading center during playtime. This is the first time I've ever seen them be able to do this! Love it!
Gingerbread Man Addition
To integrate some math, we did some Gingerbread Man button addition. For some reason they all wanted to make angry cookies!
Gingerbread Houses
We spent about 40 minutes creating some incredible Gingerbread House drawings. My kids are getting so awesome at visual discrimination and following directions, while still managing to be creative.
We gathered on the carpet for this project with pencils, paper, and clipboards. I opened The Gingerbread Baby to the last page with the gingerbread house.
I modeled drawing each shape and line step-by-step. They showed me a thumbs up when they were ready to move on.
When we finished sketching, we each grabbed a sharpie and traced our pencil lines.
After tracing, children filled in their drawing with watercolor.
I worked alongside the kids for the painting portion. I found that this works better in some situations- the kids that want more guidance can check on me, while those who don't need guidance can just get to work. Another benefit- I don't have to rush. I'm modeling taking my time with my work.
Learning How to Draw from an Author/Illustrator
Thursday we watched Jan Brett's video, "How to Draw a Gingerbread Boy," and later they wrote about their freshly laminated gingerbread house paintings.
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