Enter the gingerbread man!

Last week, Stage 1 and Early Stage 1 investigated versions of the fairy tale, The gingerbread man. This week, we will explore some Youtube clips of gingerbread recipes, attributes of foxes, and read Kel Richards’ The lamington man, an Australian version of the classic tale.


Ginger bread man – Fairy tales in English – animated / cartoon stories for kids


Fairytale: The gingerbread man read by John Krasinski by Speakaboos


2 adopted foxes and the ‘stepmom’ dog


Ylvis – The fox (What does the fox say?) [Official music video HD]


How to make a gingerbread man: gingerbread man recipe from Cookies Cupcakes and Cardio


Play Doh gingerbread man gingerbread recipe: how to make gingerbread man


Gingerbread man cookie recipe – Laura Vitale – Laura in the kitchen, Episode 253

A recipe for reading success

Our whole school community has just celebrated their love of reading this afternoon with our quarterly reading picnic – a great sight to behold: 400 students, their teachers, students’ parents and toddler siblings, spread out in groups scattered throughout the school playground, enjoying books and nibblies in a wonderful picnic atmosphere.

These celebrations have become an end-of-term tradition here over recent years, and they are so effective at bringing a community together with a literacy focus. This term we has an emphasis on procedural writing as our reading matter, with student-made recipes collected in a school cookbook, and baskets of commercial picture books, School Magazine issues and recipe books. There was also a quiz about bizarre foods, with prizes for successfully completed entries.

The last of my Wilfrid book rap groups had an opportunity to finish off their elderly resident outlines yesterday – it was frantic here last week, with Book Fair and Grandparents’ Day – and I’ve just taken digital photos of their work, which I’ll add to the rap blog’s Gallery tonight.

It’s been a busy end-of-term. While the rest of the staff were at the student disco, I presented the Wilfrid rap blog and wiki pages to a group of our parents on Tuesday night and they were surprised/enthused/fascinated at how we had harnessed the capabilities of Web 2.0 to share such meaningful learning and teaching, especially that their children had been communicating with students all over Australia and even Vietnam. While preparing my talk, I re-read the early introductory messages again this week, and it was a great reminder at how far the groups of rappers and their teachers had come in such a short time!

We are always looking for opportunities to improve community involvement in school life and promoting our website, blog and wiki URLs for parents to access at home will go a long way to fostering such involvement.

Next term’s reading picnic coincides with ALIA’s simultaneous reading of the picture book, Arthur. We have big plans for that one. Watch this space!