Chasing the Gingerbread Man

“You can’t catch me, I’m the gingerbread man!” So teases the titular cookie man as he runs away from his bakers to escape becoming their snack. It’s a timeless tale, one most of us are familiar with from our childhoods. As with most fairy tales, it may have been invented to pass along a moral, in this case, don’t eat so many cookies. If this was the original intent of the tale of the gingerbread man, it was largely ineffective, as it’s doubtful many of us have ever skipped a cookie for fear of its sudden animation.

But for Mrs. Courtney Pigg’s second grade NLR class, the story took on unexpected new life. As it turns out, this cookie had legs.

Mrs. Pigg’s class read several versions of the tale over the course of a unit on storytelling. They discussed the different story elements between the tale’s many versions. To aid in student excitement, Mrs. Pigg asked her parents to share a letter with friends from around the world, asking them to send postcards from their location indicating that the Gingerbread Man had been spotted there. 

“The intention was for our gingerbread man to be spotted in as many places as possible,” Mrs. Pigg said. “The response was overwhelming, far more than I ever expected.”

Postcards started pouring in from fascinating locales from all over the globe. The students tracked the gingerbread man on both a world map and a map of the U.S. Students were learning about places they’d never heard of before, marking his movements across the states as far away as Washington and Hawaii. Globally, the gingerbread man was spotted in three continents as he passed through places including London; Athens, Greece; Nairobi, Kenya and Okinawa, Japan.

Some “gingerbread man spotters” even sent along unexpected gifts. The students received goodies from a chocolate farm, Lavaloha, in Hilo, Hawaii. After NLR Principal Jordan Collier referenced a massive sinkhole that affected the Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, Ky., Mrs. Pigg reached out to her cousin who lived in the city to send a postcard. Her cousin surprised the class not only with a postcard of the museum, but he also sent them a model Corvette that he purchased from the museum. 

As the postcards started piling up, Mrs. Pigg’s class took the time to learn about each location — their landmarks and unique culture. One day, the students even received 10 postcards.

Alas, the gingerbread man’s time on the lam could not last forever. When the students returned from Christmas break, the gingerbread man had returned with friends: gingerbread cookies for all the students to devour. It was a glorious end for the students, if not for the gingerbread man himself. Though, after such an incredible global run, he surely lived a lifetime during that language arts and social studies unit.

“This project gave the kids a chance to think about the world around them in a creative way while also building excitement, curiosity, and a deeper connection to the world beyond our classroom,” Mrs. Pigg said.