Make gingerbread cookies to accompany your gingerbread man book.
Explore the lore of a mischievous little cookie that tries to outsmart the townsfolk he is running from. The Gingerbread Man taunts the people and animals he runs from by demanding that they try to catch him and bragging that no one can. In the end he is outsmarted and learns a valuable lesson. Recreate this story by making a Gingerbread Man book for kids to read and color on their own.
Instructions
1. Make your gingerbread man book using either card stock or construction paper. Card stock is heavier than regular paper and will hold up longer. Construction paper works well if you put each page into a plastic sleeve to protect the paper. Use crayons or markers to draw the pictures in the story book.
2. Design the cover of the book with your students. Ask each child to draw a gingerbread man or give them the option to draw another person or animal from the story like cow chasing the gingerbread man or the cunning fox. Label the cover of the book "The Gingerbread Man."
3. Ask your students to draw a picture of the old woman baking the gingerbread man in her oven on the first page. If your students are old enough, ask them to write that the woman was making a gingerbread man for her and her husband to eat. They can include what she used for the eyes, the nose and the mouth of the gingerbread man. Write the story with pencil to erase mistakes if necessary.
4. Illustrate the gingerbread man jumping out of the oven and escaping through the window on the second page of the book. Older students can write a sentence or two about the old woman telling the gingerbread man to come back and how he was running away into the forest.
5. Decorate the third and fourth pages with images of the pig and the horse the gingerbread man runs past. Older students can write that each animal he passes wants to eat him and begins to chase the gingerbread man. Include the famous phrase by the gingerbread man saying, "Run, run as fast as you can, you can't catch me. I'm the gingerbread man." On the fifth page, draw the horse that the gingerbread man runs past.
6. Show the river that the gingerbread man runs into as he flees the the hungry people and animals on the sixth page. Introduce the fox on the seventh page and show that the sly fox states that he does not want to eat the gingerbread man. On the eighth and ninth pages, draw the fox crossing the river with the gingerbread man on his tail at first, then his back next. The tenth page will show the gingerbread man standing on the fox's nose. Older students can write that the fox convinces the little cookie to climb higher up his body as the water from the river gets deeper.
7. Draw the cookie inside the fox's mouth on the final page of the story. Older students can write how the fox finished crossing the river only to devour the cookie in peace after pretending to help the gingerbread man.
8. Bind the book together on the right side using a stapler. Staple once at the top, once in the middle ans once at the bottom of the book. If you use plastic sheet protectors instead, slide each page into a separate sleeve and insert the pages into a three-ring binder.
