Gingerbread Maps

While doing our unit on gingerbread this past week, the artist in me really really wanted to let my students design a gingerbread house, because who doesn't love decorating gingy houses!?

But I knew I had to incorporate it somehow into my instruction to make it meaningful!

So I found mini paper sacks at Hobby Lobby...because I was not about to wash out milk cartons from lunch! Germs and hot milk just don't jive.

We spent 2 days (20 minutes each day) assembling our houses.

The first day we "built" them. The second day we decorated them.

We had been studying maps, their features, and cardinal directions.

Brilliantly, I decided we should make a Gingy Neighborhood!

So we created a class map for our houses.

We named the streets and added a compass rose.

We played a "game" to place the houses on the neighborhood map.

I started off by choosing a student & telling them where to place their house based on my directions.

"Put your house north of Peppermint Lane."

That student then got to choose a friend and told them where to put their house using directions.

Our neighborhood filled up quickly!

This was also a great assessment tool to tell whether students were able to give directions using a map and follow directions using a map!