Gingerbread Mania

Yes, the gingerbread man has taken over our classroom.  We have done some many wonderful activities.  Some of those include; characters and settings, story re-telling, comparing story elements, giving an opinion on their favorite ending and why, and putting on a puppet show.  I thought that making Gingerbread Ornaments (decorations) would be a great culminating activity.   So, I gathered all the ingredients to make smelly cinnamon gingerbread men.  Mrs. T took the lead with this activity, as she is way more creative than I.  We worked together with the Middlesworth's, each child having their very own job, to create the dough to make the ornaments.  We used apple sauce, nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, and the most important ingredient;  GLUE!  All the children got a change to help mix the dough, and then Mrs. T taught them how to knead the dough.  Next they had to roll out the dough and use a gingerbread cookie cutter to make their ornament.  Here are some great pictures of the process.

Then we let them dry for about 4-5 days.  When we thought they were dry enough, we let their creative juices flow.  They got to decorate their gingerbread man with all different materials.  Look how awesome they came out!  Thanks Mrs. T!

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

The past few weeks, we have been talking about parts of a story.  We discussed characters vs. setting.  We also talked about different versions of the same story.  We read many versions of the Gingerbread Man.  We talked about the similarities and differences between the stories.  Some of the stories ended with the gingerbread man being eaten, and some had a happier ending.  We decided that we should put on a puppet show to re-tell the gingerbread man.  I would love to take credit for this awesome idea, but my colleague, Mrs. Middlesworth, came up with this one.  This fit in perfectly, because we were talking about setting and characters.  First, we brainstormed all the characters that we wanted in the play.  We worked hard to make some paper puppets and we made sure to include all characters, including the animals that talk.

The puppets came from a free sight I found on Pinterest!  Click HERE to go to the sight to print
some of your own puppets!!

The next part was the tricky part.  The kids had to think about the settings in the story.  We decided there should be two settings.  One would be inside the house, in the kitchen.  The other would be outside where the gingerbread man was running.  Everyone got a manilla file folder.  On one side we drew the kitchen and on the other side we drew the outside setting.  This took a couple days, because everyone worked very hard to do their personal best.  To begin, my assistant, Mrs. T., made a sample setting.  She made sure that the whole folder was colored and she took the kids step by step to creating a wonderful outdoor setting.  We looked through books to get some ideas.  The tricky part was NOT drawing the characters in the setting.  After talking with Mrs. Middlesworth, we decided that making the character puppets really helped them understand that they didn't need to draw the gingerbread man or the old woman anywhere because they already had them.   We took the same steps to create the kitchen.  Here are some examples of their hard work.  I am so proud of them.  We will be preforming our puppet show for the class, informally, over the next two days.  Ask your children all about it!

This is Mrs. T's example of her outdoor setting!

This is Mrs. T's example of the kitchen!

Here are the kids work!  How awesome do they look???? I can't wait to retell the story.  They will flip the file folder when the setting changes!

Didn't they do such a nice job on their settings???

They worked really hard.  Stay tuned for pictures from the puppet show!

Popcorn Words Galore...

POPCORN WORDS

 GALORE

We have been busy searching for popcorn words.  Popcorn words are words that "POP UP!" frequently in reading and writing.  It is critical that readers and writers develop automatic recognition of popcorn words, a skill that leads to fluency.  Here are some of the popcorn words that we have found in our books.  They are doing such a nice job.  The popcorn words that I have introduced are a, the, is, I, and.  When you are reading with your children, have them go on a hunt like we did.  Also, if your child finds a popcorn word in a book or on a sign, you can take a picture of them pointing to the word and send in a copy.  Your child will be added to the popcorn word hall of fame!  Happy Hunting!!