Saturday, June 29, 2013

Gingerbread Man Story Starters

When I was teaching one of my areas of focus was children's literature.  I did everything I could to bring the stories to life for the kids, and to create activities for them to do in the classroom that expanded upon the stories we read.  After I left my job as a preschool teacher to stay at home with the munchkins I spent a few semesters teaching for the Super Saturday program in Cincinnati.  My class was called "Beyond Books" and each week I would read several books to the children (ages 4-7) and then we would do some fun hands-on activities based on the themes of the stories we had read.  I sometimes thought that I had as much fun developing the activities and watching the children use their imaginations as they did in actually working on the activities.  It was a super fun experience for me, and I want to share some of the fun activities I did with the students here on the blog.  

Gingerbread Man Story Starters : 

We did a whole unit on baking, and I read several versions of this popular fairy tale, and then gave the students the paper seen in the pictures below.  This would be simple to make on your computer!


The directions were pretty straightforward.  I asked the students to create their own page from the Gingerbread Man story.  Here are a few of the finished products:

 The Dragon

 The Pumpkin

The Fish

I love getting children to interpret stories and give their spin on things.  When everyone finished their papers we put them together and read it as if it were a book.  The kids loved it and were cracking up at all the responses.  This project does not need to be done in a classroom, you could do this at home with your children!

**Disclosure :: I always like to give credit where credit is due, but I have been using this form for years and years as a teacher, and I cannot remember if it is something I created on the computer or if I found it in a teaching resource, or if it was given to me by another teacher.  My mind isn't what it used to be ;)  Either way, it's an awesome writing prompt for children, you should try it!

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