Mrs. Coomber's Kinderland

Looking for the perfect Christmas gift for your students? What about a storytelling set? My kindergarteners love the simple Gingerbread Man storytelling set I create for them each year.

I like to finish the first semester of kindergarten with a focus on The Gingerbread Man. As with other folktales, I love teaching this story because it lends itself to oral storytelling.
I usually introduce the story by reading Paul Galdone’s classic retelling. I incorporate many props/characters into centers around my classroom to encourage storytelling. The students are free to make their own center choices and engage with any of the materials available in the room.
I have gingerbread cookie cutters at the playdough table. I have mini gingerbread men, a gingerbread house, animals, and blue fabric (a river) in the sensory table. And so on…

On the second day, I introduce my storytelling kit. It is a tin that is the shape of a gingerbread house. I set it up on my easel in the morning. The kids were so curious. What is that? Why is it there? What’s inside? It looks like a gingerbread house.
It certainly got their attention. When we finished our morning routine, I slowly opened the gingerbread house. Here is what was inside:

I started telling the story. Once upon a time…
All of the students joined in. Although the characters were a little different, the props captured their attention and gave the perfect visual cue to tell the story. When the gingerbread man got to the river, he came upon a dinosaur. I needed to ask all the kids to use their imaginations and pretend that the dinosaur was a fox. They were happy to oblige. (It is hard to find small fox figurines, so I substituted for a dinosaur. I am sure every teacher of young children is dinosaur-rich.) I got to the end of the story when the dino-fox was about to swallow the gingerbread man, and the students seemed a little sad. We came up with an alternative ending where the gingerbread man outsmarts the fox and makes a life on the other side of the river.
The students love to use the storytelling kit to role-play their own versions of the story throughout the week.
Most excitingly, at the end of the week, I give each student their own kit.

I ask them to wait and open the kit at the same time. They are amazed to have their own storytelling set. After checking out the characters, we tell the story together as a group, each using individual sets. As some of my students declared, “this is the best day ever!” Truly, the joy of storytelling is my favorite thing about teaching.