Have you seen our Gingerbread Friend?

December is already here! We have been reading various versions of "The Gingerbread Man" in our classroom.  We compared and contrasted the different versions and we practiced retelling the story.  We made our own Gingerbread "friend" together as a class.  I had cut out the "cookie" then invited each student to decorate him. He needed eyes, a nose, a mouth then buttons and "icing". Here he is:

We put him on a cookie sheet and into our dramatic play kitchen's oven.  We shut the oven door then went about our morning.  We took a walk to see if the playground had any puddles- to see if we would have recess or not that day (really just a reason to get out of the classroom so my T.A. could hide him). When we came back in we noticed he was gone!

We gathered on our carpet and i introduced this poem, which has been hanging up all week.

Where is my gingerbread man?
Oh where, oh where is my Gingerbread Man?
Oh where, oh where can he be?
He popped out the oven and ran out the door.
Oh where, oh where can he be?

We then made our Plan of Action!  We made a list of places he could have gone to.  I directed this more to places in our school.  Some suggestions were the zoo and a sudent's house.  I listed them on chart paper for some shared writing.  We decided to put either a happy face if he was there or a sad face if he wasn't.  As you can see, some students had a hard time doing these.  I had 3 students "draw pictures" of what he looked like so we could show people in our school. We put them on clipboards and they carried them around with them.  I also gave 3 students a magnifying glass to use on our walk. 

We went out on our walk and I brought the chart paper.  After we "looked" in each place I had a different student make the sad face until we finally found him in the cafeteria!  An email was sent around that PreK wouldbe "looking for their gingerbread man" so other teachers volunteered to let us look in their room.  This was a great collaboration activity.  As we walked by different classes or teachers they asked my students if we had found him yet and realy helped play it up. It was such a great activity. We are now building him a Gingerbread House to trap him in that we will keep in our room all month. (in referenece to Jan Brett's Gingerbread Baby).