One of Finley's favorite books is The Gingerbread Baby, which is Jan Brett's spin on the class Gingerbread Man. As luck would have it, in the program catalog from our beloved Drumlin Farm, was a class all about this tale. I signed us up weeks ago and Finley was excited when I told him about it the morning before the class. I grabbed the kids early from school on Thursday afternoon and we rushed to the farm. When we arrived, Finley got to color a brown paper gingerbread boy. As other children arrived, Finley got more and more excited and he was "flying" his gingerbread boy all around the room as he waited for the next part of the class to start.
For the next part, we all gathered on the big run in front of the fireplace and the teachers helped the children choose a role from the story. Finley eagerly agreed to be the Fox and the storytelling began. The gingerbread man was baked, escaped, and was chased by lots of farm animals before coming to the river. Enter, Finley the Fox. Our fox was a bit on the shy side, but did have fun goofing around with the older girl who was playing the gingerbread girl and he did a fantastic "chomp" when it was time for the fox to eat up the main character.
After the story, we washed our hands and got our gingerbread dough to form into our cookies. Finley flattened out the body and added a head, but asked for help to make the arms and legs. Then, they passed out cinnamon hots and raisins which Finley loved pushing into the dough. He even offered to decorate mine, what a pal!
Next, he put our cookies onto the large baking trays and laughed when the teacher promised not to open the oven door early so none of the gingerbread people could escape.
Our next destination was the farm, so everyone bundled up and we walked down to visit some of the same animals we had pretended to be in the story. The teacher carried her paper gingerbread boy and the children liked watching it "run" from all the animals. Finley told the teacher that his gingerbread boy was safe in the stroller basket where none of the animals could get to it!
We saw sheep, goats, pigs, cows, a pony, and finally made our way to the fox's den. To the teacher's great joy (apparently the fox is the wildcard in this adventure most often), the golden fox was out and about!! Finley was thrilled to see it (he was the fox, after all) but since it was nearly dark and quite chilly, he was happy that our next stop was the classroom to check on our cookies!
The cookies smelled SO good when we walked in and while they were cooling, we got to make a paper bag fox. Finley isn't quite as crafty as his mom, but I promise it was a team effort! Here's Finley trying to eat a gingerbread man with his fox puppet.
Then, it was cooke time! Finley was very proud of his creation.
He bit right in and loved the flavor!
Since he'd bitten off the legs first, he said his cookie wouldn't be able to run away now. How insightful, eh?
We both enjoyed our cookies from their toes up to their heads and then it was time to go home. Oh and Dagny was in the backpack for all of this excitement, except for when she rolled around on the rug during the story and distracted everyone with her cuteness. Oddly enough, she slept through the cookie eating process (silly girl, she missed the best part!).
Finley thought it was neat to be at the farm after dark and really enjoyed the whole class. With me going back to work, this is probably the last time we will be able to do something special like this on a weekday afternoon so I was thrilled that we "celebrated" our finale this way.
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