The Gingerbread Man

Personal Social and Emotional

Discuss the choices and actions of the characters; for example was The Gingerbread Man right to run away? When is it OK to run away from a grown-up? Talk about staying safe. Have they ever got lost, for example in the supermarket? How did it feel? What did they do? When telling the story, pass around a toy gingerbread man and each child can take it in turns to say the repeated refrain, ‘Run, run as fast as you can…’ as they hold the toy. Encourage to talk about the story and illustrations.

Communication and Language

Encourage children to listen to the story and ask and answer questions about the story and illustrations.   Hide a toy gingerbread person around the setting. Challenge children to find him and describe where he is hidden using positional language.

Physical Development

Have some running races to see who the fastest gingerbread man is. Afterwards, talk about how they feel and the effect of the exercise on their bodies. about how they feel and the effect of the exercise on their bodies.  Provide some play dough and encourage children to shape and mould the dough to create gingerbread people. They could explore making circles of dough for the head and body by rolling pieces of dough between their hands to make ball shapes and then squashing them.

Literacy

Read the story of The Gingerbread Man to the children. Encourage them to join in with the repeated refrain. At each stage, ask the children to predict what will happen next and what happens at the end – though some may already know!                                                         

Mathematics

Make four gingerbread person cut-outs and draw on each a set of buttons in different shapes – circle, square, triangle, star. Provide beads, buttons or paper cut-outs of the same shapes and encourage children to sort them onto the correct gingerbread man.   Have some gingerbread person pictures hidden in a sand tray for children to find and count.           

Understanding the World

Talk about foxes, their habits and their habitat. Why are foxes often portrayed as being sly or cunning? Would a fox really eat gingerbread? What would it prefer to eat? Do the children know of any other wild animals that we might see in Britain?                                   

Expressive Art and Design

Provide blank brown paper gingerbread man cut-outs for the children to decorate with buttons, beads, pompoms, pipe cleaners and googly eyes.   Use musical instruments to make the sound of the different characters from the story. Encourage the children to play the instruments quietly, loudly, fast or slow and to think about which instruments best represent the different characters.

Focused Vocabulary                  

Gingerbread Man, Little Old Woman, Little Old Man, Run, Pig, Cow, Horse, Fox.