So why did that Gingerbread Man always trust the fox? Why didn’t he just jump into the river and swim to safety? Today, we did a science experiment to answer those very questions.

Here is what the recording sheet looked like:

We started by brainstorming the answer to the essential question. Students thought the Gingerbread Man might sink, or float, or break apart. We put the gingerbread cookies into a bowl of water to see what would indeed happen.

After twenty minutes, the cookie was starting to get swollen with water.

After 60 minutes, the cookie started breaking apart!

We concluded that the poor Gingerbread Man did not swim across the lake because he would have broken apart and disintegrated!

The students did such a great job keeping their fingers off the mushy experiment that they each got to enjoy a cookie. Yum!