Plan Your Weekend: Family Fun with Gingerbread Adventures
Posted in Exhibitions, Holiday Train Show, Programs and Events on December 4 2009, by Plant Talk
’Tis the Season to Be…Gingery!
 |
Noelle V. Dor is Museum Education Intern in the Everett Children’s Adventure Garden. |
The holiday season is here, and the Everett Children’s Adventure Garden has cooked up a celebration of sugar, spice, and everything nice with its annual Gingerbread Adventures. While mostly everyone is familiar with the story of the Gingerbread Man and has seen (if not decorated and eaten) gingerbread cookies, many may not know the botanical and historical background of this favorite winter treat. I certainly didn’t.
As an intern in the Children’s Adventure Garden, not only do I get to work behind the scenes of this wildly popular program, I also get to join in on the adventure! Believe it or not, my previous experience with gingerbread was limited to enjoying the follies of Gingy, the gingerbread cookie character in the movie Shrek, and to helping create the “Gingerbread City” scene for a Candyland-themed high school play.
Throughout the weeks of preparing for Gingerbread Adventures, though, I added tremendously to that experience. I now know the main ingredients of gingerbread: ginger, wheat, sugar, cinnamon, and cloves. I planted my own wheat seeds and watched as they germinated within a week and grew very fast thereafter. Also, I have definitely delighted in the lovely aromas of cinnamon, cloves, and ginger, along with the wonderfully whimsical ornamentation of the Adventure Garden. (I especially love the gingerbread houses created by master bakers in the New York area.)
Gingerbread Adventure-seekers use all of their senses to explore gingerbread in its different stages, from the original plants and raw ingredients to the final product—tasty gingersnaps that children decorate with Red Hots®, licorice, frosting, and sprinkles! They also participate in various steps of the process by potting up wheat seeds and grinding spices with a mortar and pestle.
Hands-on experiences like this create a better appreciation for the foods that we eat. I look forward to sharing in the discovery process and fun activities in store for visitors.
Come to the Children’s Adventure Garden this winter and see why we call it the most wonderful time of the year.
