The Gingerbread Boy, Part 2

February Week 4

We started out this week reading The Gingerbread Man Loose in the School by Laura Murray.

This is a very cute story about a class baking a gingerbread man, who runs away from the classroom. He gets lost while the children are at recess, and visits several staff members and various rooms before returning to his classroom.

We also read Catch that Cookie by Hallie Durand, which has a very similar story line and is equally entertaining. 

The Lost Gingerbread Man

After reading to my kids, I showed them a gingerbread man cookie I had baked the night before. I told them we would decorate it and share it after lunch.

But when we returned from lunch, the cookie was missing and we found this note!

LOST! Posters

Like the children in the story, we promptly created signs to inform the rest of the school that our gingerbread man was missing!

They read, "Lost! If you find him, bring him to Kindergarten."

On Tuesday, this message was on our whiteboard. We took a long walk around the school to look for him, and ask a few staff members if they had seen him.

First Bite Graph

We created a graph to decide where we would like to bite the gingerbread cookie first!

Their reasoning was hilarious- "We have to bite his leg so he can't run away anymore!" and "We have to bite his head off so he can't see where he's going!"

Wednesday they had a writing prompt: "I think the Gingerbread Man is...". We reread the original Gingerbread Man story, and for the first time, I had the kids run the puppet show on their own. The narrator did an awesome job!

The Cookie Hunt

Thursday we had a new message awaiting us in our classroom after lunch:

The kids knew right away to check the library! He wasn't there, but left us another note.

This was an easy one too- the office. No gingerbread man, but we did find the Principal and another teacher, who were so intrigued they decided to follow us around for the rest of the search! Here's the note that was in the office-

To the lunchroom/gym- where the middle school kids were having P.E. Most of us stood aside while I sent one student to grab the clue- to avoid injury caused by stray basketballs. :)

This one was tough! Some children suggested we go back to the kitchen, and others suggested the post office! I let them brainstorm until someone finally figured out that it must be the staff room.

They were SO excited about this, and we literally could not keep them from running noisily down the hall back to our classroom! After a quick search, they found our Gingerbread Man, and a plate of his friends, along with a final note.

We began playtime, and one by one, I had the kids come over and decorate their cookie.

When centers were done, we skipped our computer lab time for the day and instead enjoyed our cookies and a quick movie. We reviewed our "First Bite" graph to determine what part we should bite first

I'd never seen some of the kids so excited! One of the parents told me later that her son had been talking about the Gingerbread Man all week, and she's sure it will be something he'll remember for the rest of his life. Hearing that made my day and made all the extra work so worth it!