CCISD Child Nutrition Department hosts gingerbread man party

By Karen Folger 
Special to the Leader-Press

“Run, run, fast as you can. You can’t catch me, I’m the gingerbread man!” That familiar rhyme is found in the popular fairy tale, The Gingerbread Man.
The CCISD Child Nutrition Department helped second grade students at Fairview/Miss Jewell Elementary bring the Gingerbread Man and Gingerbread Woman to life as a sweet treat this holiday season. 
Student Jamarion Pruitt could not decide which ingredients to use to decorate her cookie. So, she used them all. 
“I put all the stuff that I could on it, like the colored cereal, some whipping cream, some sprinkles and jellies,” Pruitt said.
Gingerbread houses, and it is believed gingerbread cookies as well, originated in Germany after the Brothers Grimm fairytale, Hansel and Gretel. The hard cookies, sometimes gilded with gold leaf and shaped like animals, kings and queens, were a staple at medieval fairs in England, France, Holland and Germany. Queen Elizabeth I is credited with the idea of decorating the cookies in this fashion, after she had some made to resemble the dignitaries visiting her court. Over time, some of these festivals came to be known as Gingerbread Fairs, and the gingerbread cookies served there were known as ‘fairings.’
Student Tommie Brown made an “abominable snowman gingerbread man.”  
“I put some green frosting on and I put a lot of white and purple,” Brown said. “I’m going to take it home and put it in the oven to dry.”
The students, who each lunch the latest on the schedule each day, were rewarded with the sweet treats as a thank you for their patience with changes in with student meals, said Serena Spivey, CCISD Coordinator of Child Nutrition.  
“These children have been putting up with a lot of issues this year due to the fact that Fairview/Miss Jewell has had a large increase in student enrollment,” Spivey said. “There have been a lot of times that we were almost out of food and a lot of the time the children did not get what they actually thought they were going to when they came through the line.”  
Student Rowdy Moore laughed after he took a bite out of his cookie he had decorated.
“Once upon a time there was a gingerbread man with no head left,” Moore said with a cackle. 
Teachers also took advantage of the sweet surprise to increase students’ reading, writing and comprehension skills.
Fualole Callahan Uepa made a Gingerbread Sweet Mom from the story the students read in class before coming to the cafeteria.
“We wrote about the gingerbread and I made it from the story we read,” Uepa said. “I like the gingerbread. Tt tastes good and sweet with a cookie bottom.”