Dear Parents,
We prepared for our cookies and milk party every day this week.
On Monday we read three versions of The Gingerbread Boy. We noticed he was smiling and running on all three book covers, and that each story began with a little old woman and a little old man. The children said the gingerbread cookie gets eaten by a fox in all three stories. He did.
On Tuesday we read a fourth version and started mixing our dough. We mixed flour, ginger, cinnamon, an egg, molasses, and many other ingredients. We read about how molasses is made. The children said it looked like chocolate. Everyone took turns using the hand mixer. We put the dough in the fridge to use the next day and went to run, run, as fast as we could in the big room.
We read a fifth version of The Gingerbread Man. In this story the old man and the old woman have a little boy of their own. The animals and people chasing the gingerbread man were different in this telling. The gingerbread boy still gets eaten. Someone asked, “Are there any gingerbread girls?”
The next day we discovered yet another gingerbread boy story. We compared it again. The gingerbread man goes the way of every other gingerbread boy ever made.
We spent lots of time rolling out our dough and cutting out almost seventy gingerbread people. We went down to put them in the oven and hoped they wouldn't hop out when we opened the oven door. Many children were adamant that we could catch them if they did.
After our cookies were baked, we acted out the story. There were four little old men and women, two cows, three horses, four gingerbread men, and only one fox. He ate all the cookies, after a swim across a river. The next day, the children acted out the story again on their own. We overheard the fox say, “Come a little closer.”
Our long awaited cookies and milk were everything we hoped for. Everyone took their gifts home to bestow upon their families.
Have a most wonderful break and see you in the new year,
Therese