Ginger Fun!

"And I had but one penny in the world. Thou should’st have it to buy gingerbread." 

– William Shakespeare, Love’s Labours Lost

Today we had some friends over. I knew it would be a good time to learn about gingerbread men.

This guy is one smart cookie.

He leaps, runs, hobbles and scooches as fast as he can to catch up to his missing classmates.

This story has been begged to be read again and again. 

Very fun.

This book caused lots of giggles! I love the Gingerbread Pirate. He is quite feisty and ready to defeat the cannibal Santa Claus who is apparently planning to eat the gingerbread cookie crew members!

A good laugh and a sweet ending.

The pictures in this book are so adorable. My seven year old and I have read this over and over. 

Such a quaint story.

Inspired by our books, we took to the kitchen and started making our own gingerbread.

Remember: sifting the dry ingredients is key!

And then my four year old celebrity chef decided to make a concoction of his own.

Very inventive, but we all agreed it tasted horrible.

Foam gingerbread stickers!

Always a good time.

I have wanted to try a Glyph for a while now, and this was loads of fun.

We asked a variety of questions and based on everyone's answers they created their respective gingerbread men.

 It made for some very creative gingerbread!

While we waited for the gingerbread cookie dough to finish chilling,

we took to the books.

The Gingerbread Cowboy is a great re-telling of the Gingerbread Man story.

It's full of Texas-Western themes, animals and antics.

A great read.

The traditional Gingerbread Man.

Classic in every sense of the word. 

While we cut and rolled shapes, we discussed the differences between the stories.

Although, very similar there were a few things that stood out.

The original story has the fox saying, "My back will get sore if you ride there. Hop onto my head."

This was found to be suspicious.

Everyone preferred the logic of the coyote in The Gingerbread Cowboy, who slyly says, "The water is rising, jump onto my head."

When the first batch of cookies was cooked, one cookie was missing!

All that was left was a note:

I got bored in the oven. Come find me.

So the hunt was on.

We gathered clues and learned that ...

Ginger had ran to his friend Snowman's safehouse and waited there for an opportune moment to...

escape out the front door!

He was serious about a getaway!

Until our crew members said, "Wait!"

Ginger stopped his road weary travels to hear their suggestion.

He agreed it was a good idea.

Instead of eating him, his new friends wanted.... 

to play hide and seek with him.

One friend would hide him and everyone else would have to find him.

This went on for a very long time.

In preparation for icing the cookies, we played with the icing spreaders.

We made a little Catch the Gingerbread board game. The chase was on.

Gingerbread made it safely to the end without being caught.

Then it was time to decorate! Yay! 

Ta-da!