Run, run as fast as you can,
You can’t catch us,
We’re the Kindergarten Clan!
The Kindergarten class has had a lot of fun listening to the traditional tale ‘The Gingerbread Man’.
We listened to many different versions of the story and looked at what is the same in each version and what is different. The Kindergarten children noticed that there is a fox in every version but that the other animals can be different. Some stories just have a horse and cow, in others there is a pig, a cockerel, a dog and a cat. Which version have you heard and which do you like the most?
All the children thoroughly enjoyed performing their own puppet shows of this fantastic story and you can see in our attached video that we created our own Kindergarten version of ‘The Gingerbread Man’ story in our P.E. lesson when we played a Gingerbread Man game. We had fun trying to get across the river without getting caught by those tricky foxes!
We also enjoyed creating a classroom full of gingerbread children by drawing around each of the children in the class on brown paper to make them look like a gingerbread boy or girl and then the children painted on their own currant eyes, nose and mouth. They then added 3 buttons and some yummy icing.
Can you tell who is who? Please come into our classroom to take a look at our life-sized gingerbread kids.
We thought it was sad that the gingerbread man got eaten so we decided to change the ending of the story, this is what the KG children thought should happen instead…….
“The gingerbread man could ride on a duck.”
“The gingerbread man could do a flip over the duck’s head and land on the island.”
“There is a frog chasing the gingerbread man, the frog jumps up and lands next to the gingerbread man and eats him.”
“He should ride on a boat instead.”
“There is a waterfall and the gingerbread man is scared of the waterfall, he goes on a horse and goes on the horse’s ear.”
“The gingerbread man was walking with another gingerbread man.”
“He could sneak out of the window and nobody could chase him and nobody could eat him. All of the animals did not want to eat him. He had a really happy family.”
Some Gingerbread Facts.
Did you know that………
Gingerbread dates from the 15th century, and figural biscuit-making was practiced in the 16th century. The first documented instance of figure-shaped gingerbread biscuits was at the court of Elizabeth I of England. She had the gingerbread figures made and presented in the likeness of some of her important guests. However, according to Carole Levin, director of the medieval studies program at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and author of The Reign of Elizabeth I, The Queen wasn’t the only person eating gingerbread men. During this time period, gingerbread men were created as love tokens for young women. If they could get the man of their choice to eat the gingerbread man that had been made for them, the idea was the man would then fall in love with the young woman.
The term Gingerbread refers to a broad category of baked goods, typically flavored with ginger, cloves, nutmeg or cinnamon and sweetened with honey, sugar or molasses. Gingerbread foods vary, ranging from a soft, moist loaf cake to something close to a ginger biscuit.
Our next step is to have a go at baking some Gingerbread Boys and girls, let’s hope they don’t run away before we can eat them.
We are hoping they will be delicious.
Watch this space……for KG’s action-packed Gingerbread Man Talk 4 Writing video where the children retell the story. Will KG be able to remember the whole story?
Origins
The Gingerbread Man, also known as The Gingerbread Boy, is a folktale about a gingerbread man’s escape from various pursuers and his eventual demise between the jaws of a fox. The American version of ‘The Gingerbread Boy’ first appeared in print in the May, 1875, issue of St. Nicholas Magazine in a cumulative tale which, like ‘The Little Red Hen’, depends on repetitious scenes featuring an ever-growing cast of characters for its effect.
This story is similar to ‘The Runaway Pancake’ story from Europe, and other more modern tales including Eric Kimmel’s The Runaway Tortilla (2000) about a desert-roving tortilla who avoids donkeys, rattlesnakes, and buckaroos only to be defeated by crafty Señor Coyote; the Hanukkah version called The Runaway Latkes (2000) by Leslie Kimmelman; and Ying Chang Compestine’s Chinese New Year tale, The Runaway Rice Cake (2001).