Integrating Gingerbread Week

It's officially THE most wonderful time of the year!

We always do it big in December with a little tons of gingerbread fun.

Here are a few of the books we read throughout the last week.

I use many of these stories to teach or reinforce lessons on comprehension skills such as sequencing, making predictions, retelling, etc.

Here are a few of the book responses we use,they can accompany any of the books pictured above.

One fun group activiy we did was retell the story of Gingerbread Baby.

Each group was given a part of the plot to complete: characters, setting, sequence of events, problem solution.

We put them in order and onto this chart:

I adore these tasty little cookies SO much that I created a Gingerbread Literacy unit to go along with our fun we have. Included are the responses you saw above and more! 

We've been studying adjectives in grammar and writing. I gave each student a gingerbread cut-out to decorate with cheap art supplies.

They then had to describe their adorable creations using adjectives!

(This sample is from Ship Shape First Grade---I forgot to take a picture of ours!)

Beyond reading, we have even more fun with gingerbread!

This fun science experiment from Abby is always a hit.

We have also been learning about maps in Social Studies. 

I found these mini brown paper sacks at Hobby Lobby and the kids decorate them as gingerbread houses.

We created a gingerbread neighborhood to place our houses on.

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.

And who couldn't end the week without decorating AND eating some of these delicious gems!

It may just be the hit of the week!