Run, Run, Run as Fast As You Can!

I have been teaching the concept of retelling stories in my class. This is an incredibly important early literacy task, and I like to use traditional stories and nursery rhymes. We taught the Three Little Pigs and The Gingerbread Man. As I was preparing my lessons for the Gingerbread Man, I was debating about whether or not to tell the story with the title character being, ahem, *eaten* at the end! The children I teach are pretty young, so I was going back and forth on the issue.

Then, I remembered that Daphne had a unit on the Gingerbread Man in her kindergarten class, so I asked Daphne what happened to him at the end of the story.

Daphne said, "Well. I don't remember what happened to the Gingerbread Man, but I do know what happened to the Gingerbread Girl!"

Alright- she aroused my curiosty. I bit. "What?"


Daphne: "Well, when the Fox tells her to jump onto his nose, she grabs a licorice stick from her hair and ties his mouth shut, and jumps off to the other side of the river!"


This sounds cute, I think. But, I ask, "What does the Gingerbread girl say when she's running? You know, the Gingerbread Man says 'Run, run, run as fast as you can! You can't catch me, I'm the Gingerbread Man!'?"

Daphne: "Oh! She says, 'Run, Run Run, with a leap and a twirl! You can't catch me, I'm the Gingerbread Girl!'"

It's a really cute variation on the story, if you are ever interested, you can find it here.

So, of course, during thecourse of all this, I had to make Gingerbread Men! Isaac and Daphne were totally excited to make them and had a great time decorating theirs:
(with gobs of icing!)