The Kraziness of KF Kinderland: #KFkinders Present The Gingerbread Man on Green Screen

Hello All! I am so excited to share #KFkinders latest MakerSpace production. We combined our learning of story elements like setting, characters, and important events and learned how to use the green screen app, DoInk, to make a green screen production using The Gingerbread Man.

#KFkinders were busy using a story board to outline the 3 most important settings. We decided that the kitchen at the beginning of the story has important because it is where we meet 2 of the main characters, the old woman and the gingerbread man. Then we decided that the most important setting for the middle of the story was the path that the gingerbread man ran away from the house on. At the end of the story it is important that the gingerbread man runs to the river and needs help across it. This is where we meet the third main character, the fox.

We spent a lot of time in the classroom, during our workstations, and during writer's workshop retelling The Gingerbread Man. Retelling the events in a story is a really hard skill for kinders. We used graphic organizers, re-read gingerbread man stories, watched gingerbread man videos on YouTube, and practiced retelling the story with our partners. When kinders can retell the story, it shows us that they are able to visualize a story and comprehend what is happening. This is a very mature skill for readers to be practicing. Try practicing retelling familiar stories at home with your #KFkinders as a way to go deeper with their comprehension and reading skills.

Click on THIS LINK to watch the video of us using YouTube to retell our story!

After we outlined the important events, settings, and characters we took our learning to the MakerSpace and enlisted Mrs. Bear to help! In the MakerSpace we made our own puppets using different supplies. One thing that we really had to be mindful of was we could not use green on our puppets. When you use a green screen, anything that is the color green will blend into the background. This was hard for us to remember and caused us to make some redesigns with our puppets. Another element to making our puppets was we had to work together with our partner to decide how we wanted each character to look. Taking turns, collaborating on ideas, and using caring language is something that needs to be practiced in a structured environment before we can expect kinders to master the skill. Check out these picture of us making our puppets!

The last bit of learning was to use the green screen app, DoInk. We used the setting pictures that each kinder group drew for their backgrounds. When it was time to record, we had to really work on making our voices match the characters. This made hearing our voices hard. Next time we do a green screen production,, we know we need to be LOUDER!!!

This is what the DoInk app looks like in the ap store.

HERE IS A LINK for a great informational video to outline what DoInk can do and how to use it.

After we were done with our green screen production, we introduced a maker challenge to change the ending of our story. Changing the ending of the familiar Gingerbread Man tales forced #KFkinders to really think of the purpose of the events and characters in the story.

To start the maker challenge, I posed a question for them...

Why did the gingerbread man want to cross the river?

This question generated great dialogue between #KFkinders revolving around the gingerbread man's motivation to get away from the little old woman. So the next question that presented the group was...

Was the fox trustworthy?

As you can imagine, this got them all talking about how bad the fox was and his only motivation to help was so he could eat the gingerbread man. So now we have outlined the problem...

The gingerbread man needs to cross the river, but doesn't want to trust the fox. What else could the gingerbread use to cross the river?

With this question the #KFkinders worked in pairs to find a solution for the gingerbread man. We had a river (blue paper) for each group to use and they got to choose from various supplies found in the MakerSpace (legos, cardboard, glue, blocks, straws, string, etc.) to build with. You can see from the pictures below that our "solutions" varied. We had some groups build a bridge, some built a boat, others got more creative!

We even hosted a learning team from Keokuk School District to show them what we do in our MakerSpace!

Here are some interviews during our MakerSpace challenge! Listen to how we problem solve, reflect, tweak, and collaborate!

Kaleb and PaytenJackson and Lauren

Brock and Maggie

Kole and Grayce

Elizabeth and Leah

Roman and Tripp

Olivia and Maliah

After we were done with the challenge, we talked about how using our solutions from the maker challenge would change the story completely. We then spent some time retelling The Gingerbread Man using our new endings!

Please enjoy our videos and our green screen production on our retelling of The Gingerbread Man! We want to continue using our green screen at school to put together different projects but wanted to share our journey from start to finish!