The Gingerbread Man Loose in the School with discussion questions and activities

I had a lot of fun with The Gingerbread Man Loose in the School by Laura Murray.  I used this book for a children's book club book, and found so much that could be talked about and activities that could be done around this adventurous story.

First let me tell you about the book.

I learned that this was Mrs. Murray's first book!  She had been a teacher and this book was an activity she had done with her class at the beginning of each school year!  This is a great book that you can use on the first day of school to start off the year or read it and have fun at any point in the year.

In the book a class bakes a gingerbread man and then they leave for recess, the gingerbread man then explores the school trying to find his class.  He meets the gym teacher, nurse, art teacher and the principle.  I love how the book is an introduction to school and different rooms of the school, and a twist on the original gingerbread man story.  When I presented this book to preschoolers I retold the original story first with puppets, that way they can make guesses about what they think will happen in the book and compare the two stories.

Puppets I made for retelling the original story (condensed) 

Laura does a great job in rhyming and using some great vocabulary words in the rhymes.  I don't think I would have thought to rhyme with "complete" or "explore."  I thought this was very clever and Murray does add in many great vocab words to share and discuss.

The lay out of the book is another point worth sharing.  Unlike most picture books that have one photo per page or page spread, Mike Lowery has done the illustrations for The Gingerbread Man Loose in the School in a comic book style, where there are a typically two to four boxes with illustrations on each page.  I like this layout.  I love that each page isn't in the same format, some pages have three illustrations, some have only one and the timing of each set lets you ask your readers to predict what they think will happen next.

My favorite thing about this book is all the opportunity there is to have open ended discussion with your readers.  There are also many crafts and activities you can do around this book and gingerbread men in general.  Let me dive into sharing some discussion questions I used while reading this book.

Pre-Reading...Before you even open the book here are some questions to get the mind working and predicting:

What do you think will happen in this book?  This is a question that you can ask before reading any book.  Look at the cover, what clues does it give you for what this book is about?  What does the title say about what might happen or who might be in this book?  

Who is the author?  Illustrator?  This allows you to teach the kids what an author does and what the illustrator's job is.

Where do you think a gingerbread man would have the most fun at school?  I loved asking this question and listening to the different responses.  Don't be afraid to ask the kids Why they chose the room they did.  My oldest daughter answered with, "A gingerbread man would have the most fun in the gym and art room. Because they are my favorite places. He'd make a mess and play with the stuff and create portraits and paper-mache" While my youngest chose the playground because he'd have fun playing there.  Let you're child's imagination run wild here.  For teachers you can turn this into a writing assignment for older kids.  Not only where would he have the most fun but describe what the gingerbread man would do.

While Reading Questions:  As I said earlier the layout of the book offers many areas not only areas to ask "What will happen next" questions but many chances for other discussion as well. These questions you can choose some to ask during the reading of the book or save other to ask when you've finished reading and go back to the page you're referring to if you want.

What other ingredients might you need to make gingerbread cookies?     What would you use to decorate a gingerbread man?

The Gingerbread Man broke his toe!  Have you ever broken a bone?  Where can he go to get his toe fixed?  Who could help him?  How will the nurse fix his toe?

Is using the handrail as a slide safe?  What could happen to the gingerbread man by sliding down the handrail?  In my online group I asked the adults to admit to having done this, I never had the guts to and when I read the book to preschoolers I remind them that it's not safe and if Miss Fawn were to try it I'd probably fall and get hurt, but since this is a cookie and he's in a book he can try it and anything can happen.

When he lands in the lunch bag you can ask Do you like cookies with your lunch?  What is your favorite type of cookie?

Post-Reading-Questions: 

Which gingerbread man story did you like better, the original where the fox eats the gingerbread man, or the school one where he becomes part of the class?

What would you do if your gingerbread man came to life?  This was a favorite question of mine to ask because it's completely open ended with no wrong answer.  Asking this in a group setting was interesting to see how many different answers there were.


How would you feel if your gingerbread man ran away?

What was your favorite part of the book?  Why?

What did you think of the illustrations?  This is a good question to ask for any book because you're showing them that they can have their own artist style.

Would you recommend this book to other people?  Why or Why not?

There are a lot of directions in the book, are you good with finding your way around new places?

For comprehension:

Who did the gingerbread man meet?

What happened in the book?  Go over the sequence of events.

Activities!!  

Be your own illustrator!  Create your own gingerbread man.  As the adult you can decide what materials you want used or let your kids decide how they want to make their gingerbread man.

Baking!  Obviously the book opens with cooking and is a clear activity to go along with the book.  Break out the aprons, dust off that gingerbread cookie recipe and create your own man or girl.  You don't have to stick with gingerbread, have your kids help bake their favorite cookie.

Rhyme Time!  The book is full of rhyming words.  I took a poster-board and wrote down several different rhyming sequence that were in the book then had kids match up the rhyming words.  You could ask further this by having them write their own rhyming word to go on the board or list.

Two different games I designed were for preschool and kindergarten and you can customize this to fit your own grade level.  I did numbers for preschool and had kids take turns rolling a die and coloring in the number they rolled.  They had to count the number of dots on the die and find the corresponding number on their picture and color that in.  In small groups they took turns and helped each other.  For kindergarten I used sight words and flash cards.  You can draw up your own outline and do multiplication, addition, or whatever you want to practice with your kids.  If you want some that are already done I'd recommend the lovely Pinterest.

Fill the gingerbread man with descriptive words. This gets kids working on their vocabulary, and is a fun way to introduce adjectives to the class.  Even with kids who haven't learned what an adjective is or are unsure what "descriptive words" are I found you can coach the kids with asking them to tell me what their gingerbread man would look like, or how the cookie taste.  While doing this with a group add your own words as an adult. I had fun doing this activity in my literacy group and sharing the answers of kids and getting various parents and teachers comments their own descriptions.  Doing this and putting all the words together for everyone to see and hear gets creativity flowing and leads to more thoughtful answers.  So while at first we had words like hot, sweet, amazing, yummy, soft we then started to dig deeper and then words like spunky, animated, fancy, sassy, and squishy were added to the list.  Getting adults to participate in activities like this enhances learning for kids because they see the excitement of adding another word and their vocabulary grows as well.  This could also lead to a deeper discussion: What about the word "gullible" Would you say the gingerbread man in the original story was gullible to believe the fox was going to help him?

One last activity I did with the kid's book club and online was:

I love word games! Boggle has long been a favorite of mine and it's great for kids to have fun spelling and changing letters around without the pressure of a test or grading.

Do you want more activities?  Laura Murray has a wonderful website where she shares some more activities and teaching tools you can use to go with her book and check out all the other adventures her gingerbread man goes on!

Want some other gingerbread books?  Check out these:

Stay warm, have fun, and as always enjoy a good book!