The Case of the Escaped Gingerbread Man-a holiday mystery!

Today was such fun! The holiday tradition that I share with my class is my collection of Gingerbread stories. We have been reading them for a little over a week now. On Friday we made gingerbread dough, yesterday we made individual gingerbread cookies, and today we made a giant Gingerbread Man.

We rolled out the dough, cut out one large cookie and then each child added some candy.

We popped him in the oven.

                                          And guess what?!

Sure enough, just like the stories we have been reading, he jumped out of the oven and ran away. He left us rhyming clues at every one of his stops.

First he went to the classroom next door. There we found his note in a bookshelf.

He sent us down to the two year old’s classroom. The teacher there found a note in her cabinet.

Our Gingerbread man is pretty worldly as his next stop was to the office to surf the net.

We found what he was looking at on the internet: turtles. So we knew our clue would direct us back upstairs to our turtle tank.

We were too late as he had decided to go outside.

A quick jaunt outside found our last clue. He was cold and going in to get mittens.

Back inside as quietly as can be and…… FOUND HIM!! In the corner, trying on some of Jack’s mittens

We lovingly scooped him up and then with great fan fare we ate him while reading Gingerbread Friends, our last gingerbread story until someone finds a new version for me.

At pickup time, all of the children were delighted to share the details of their day with their parents. Many of them asked me if we could make another one tomorrow-only tomorrow they want her to be a girl.

Check out these yummy versions of this delicious story

The Gingerbread Girl- Lisa Campbell Ernst

Gingerbread Cowboy-Janet Squires

The Gingerbread Pirates-Kristin Kladstrup
Gingerbread Baby-Jan Brett

Gingerbread Friends-Jan Brett

Reading and rhyming are playfully delicious!

Playfully Learning is Delicious!

One of the great joys of having a pastry chef as an assistant is the wonderful baking that we get to do in class.  We have always cooked in our classroom, but it has a special flair this year, thanks to my assistant, Katherine.

She was even a good enough sport to wear her full uniform to class one day when she cooked with us.  The children were thrilled.

Following our field trip to the grocery store and hearing about how the bakers come in at 3am to start the baking, we pretended it was 3am in our classroom one day.

A mom wanted to come in and decorate holiday cookies with the children as that is their family tradition, and we also decided to make bread from scratch.  Our room turned into a bake shop for the day-actually two, as the bread is a two day process.

The children enjoyed measuring, pouring, counting and mixing.  They learned about the properties of yeast and how to knead.

The also learned just how many sprinkles one sugar cookie can hold.

I always use tongue depressors when spreading anything with children as it is just too darn hard not to lick the knife. This keeps the germs from spreading and the tongues from getting cut-everyone has their own and we just throw them away when finished.  They never dip into a community bowl with them; the butter, cream cheese or frosting is always put on their plates and then they use their own spreaders.

It was a delicious few days of learning though play!

Real Life Investigating-The Grocery Store

We went on a great field trip a couple of weeks ago.  We have been studying the topic of the grocery store and creating our own, so we wanted to go to a store with a critical eye and see if some of the things we predicted would indeed be found.  We live near a Stew Leonard's which is basically the Disneyland of grocery stores.

Before going, I created a scavenger hunt form with items that the children thought they would see.  The most interesting item was "people with dogs".  Each chaperone held a clipboard with the scavenger hunt sheet and reminded the children of what they were looking for as we walked around.

We had a great tour guide, Dori, who explained each area to the children as well as what happened behind the scenes.  We were also able to taste our way through the store.  The children had chocolate chip cookies, fresh baked donuts, rice cakes, pomegranate juice, cheese,  and the grand finale of ice cream!

For those with students with allergies, I did contact the parents of the children with allergies ahead of time about the ice cream and had back up snacks available.  A few of the tasting items were a surprise and I did have to call the parents that were not with us. This is a good point to remember.

The children had a wonderful time, and were able to see in action many of the things we were re-enacting in our dramatic play center including restocking the shelves!