The Gingerbread Man

This is a great story to use during December and there are many versions to choose from. There are so many activities that go with it. A very common version is written by Jan Brett. If you google the gingerbread man, you will find lots of activities related to her version. There are other versions and for fun for older kids you could take two or three different versions and compare them to each other. You could even use a simple graph to compare two or three things in the stories. I would stick with one version for younger kids. You will know your kids and what they would be interested in as well as their comprehension.

Here are some versions of the story:

The Gingerbread Man by Jim Aylesworth and Barbara McClintock

The Gingerbread Man by Catherine Mccafferty

The Gingerbread Man (Easy-to-Read Folktales) by Karen Schmidt

The Gingerbread Girl by Lisa Campbell Ernst

Gingerbread Baby by Jan Brett

A fun thing to do is to read the story until your kids are familiar with it. Then make gingerbread cookies with your kids. Let them cool and decorate them. The next day or soon after, set up a little search for a gingerbread man. Leave notes in various places and go on a hunt for him. The notes will say something like, "You didn't find me here, check under the table. Run, run as fast as you can. You can't catch me, I'm the gingerbread man". Do this in 3 or 4 locations until you find the gingerbread man and then you get to eat the cookie when you find it - well, your kids do, anyway!

If you can, you can always make a flannel board story so the kids can see the story and manipulate the characters. You will have to make a felt character for each character that is in your particular book (each book is slightly different). They can also practice sequencing with the characters.

Reading books over and over is something kids naturally do. You may get tired of it long before they do, but it is really beneficial for their language development. Anything you can add to the story, like flannel board characters, or acting it out is really good for their language development and their story comprehension.

Here are two links with patterns you can use for flannel board stories.

http://familycrafts.about.com/od/treeornaments/ss/GingerbreadManPattern.htm

http://www.abcteach.com/free/g/gingerbreadman_m.pdf