Gingerbread Activities

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Gingergread Adventures Balanced Literacy Unit

Literacy

Poems & Class Books

A-B-CDE
The Gingerbread Man is running from me.
F-G-HIJ
The Gingerbread Man is running away.
K-L-MNO
I said stop. He said NO!
P-Q-RST
Across the river’s where he wants to be.
U-V-WXY
I can’t catch him even if  I try
Z-Z-ZZZ
The Gingerbread Man is running from me.

Gingerbread Man Poem Printable

 

One cookie, two cookies, three cookies, four.
Five cookies, six cookies, seven cookies, more.

 

Gingerbread, gingerbread, turn around.
Gingerbread, gingerbread, touch the ground.
Gingerbread, gingerbread, climb the stairs.
Gingerbread, gingerbread, say your prayers.
Gingerbread, gingerbread, turn out the light.
Gingerbread, gingerbread, say goodnight.

---

 

Four Gingerbread Men
Four gingerbread men sat on a tray.
The first one said, “Let’s run away!”
The second one said, “Where will we run?”
The third one said, “We’ll have some fun!”
The fourth one said, “We’ll be eaten if we stay.”
So the gingerbread men all ran away!

“The Gingerbread Man: How to Make Sure He Can Not Escape!”

Create a Gingerbread Man Book titled, “The Gingerbread Man: How to Make Sure He Can Not Escape!” using the ideas in Kim’s kid-made books at this website: http://www.hubbardscupboard.org/seasonal_related.html

In this book, the gingerbread man is not able to escape because the children bite off arms, legs, and head (actually tear off parts). You can use an Ellison gingerbread man, purchase a tablet, or cut your own.

  

Booklet for students:
“The Gingerbread Man Mystery” from I Can Make It! I Can Read It! Winter, The Education Center TEC3513

Class book to make:
Complete one page for each child by having them fill in their name and illustrate the gingerbread man.
“Stop, stop!” said ______________________.
But the Gingerbread Man laughed and said,
“Run, run, as fast as you can!
Your can’t catch me,
I’m the Gingerbread Man.”

Other Literacy

Gingerbread Man Role-Play

Use story character puppets to act out the story.
Character puppets can be printed from this site:
http://www.dltk-teach.com/rhymes/gingerbread/felt.htm

Gingerbread Man Character Comparison

We read several different versions of the book, The Gingerbread Man and compared the story characters in each. Our favorite version was The Stinky Cheese Man.

Literature

    

• The Gingerbread Man by Brenda Parkes
• The Gingerbread Man by Jim Aylesworth
• The Gingerbread Man by Eric Kimmel
• The Gingerbread Baby by Jan Brett
• The Gingerbread Man by Karen Schmidt
• The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales by Jon Scieszka

Centers

Gingerbread Scented Playdough

Gingerbread Playdough
1 cup flour
1/2 cup salt
2 tsp. cream of tartar
1 cup water
1 tsp. vegetable oil
lots of cinnamon, allspice, ginger, nutmeg, whatever!

DIRECTIONS:
Mix the dry ingredients. Play with the spices till you get the
scent and color you want. Mix water and oil together first and THEN add them to the dry ingredients and stir. In a pot, cook the mixture for two to three minutes, stirring frequently. The dough will start to pull away from the sides of the pan and clump together. Take the dough out of the pan and knead the dough until it becomes soft and smooth. Allow to cool and store in an air-tight container. Place gingerbread playdough in the sensory table with gingerbread cookie cutters of various sizes. Don’t forget the cookie sheets and rolling pins!

Gingerbread Boy Stickers

These are stickers that can be used to decorate the Gingerbread boy and girl.

Gingerbread Cottage Stickers

The stickers are used to create a Gingerbread cottage. Both sets of gingerbread stickers are available from Oriental Trading.

Gingerbread Cottage with Word Cards

The gingerbread cottage is two houses glued together around all the edges except one section of the roof–this makes a storage envelope. Vocabulary words were written on gingerbread boys and girls. These words can be practiced and stored in their own house.

This is a visual discrimination game. Gingerbread men in various positions are on placed on the gameboard and on cards. The student draws a card and proceeds to the first block with the matching gingerbread man. First one to get to the gingerbread house at the end of the game board is the winner.

Math

Roll a Gingerbread Man Game

Students need a blank sheet of paper or use the dotted template included in the download. They work in small groups and take turns rolling a die to make a gingerbread man, including his head, body, face 2 arms, 2 legs and at least 3 buttons. The first one to finish drawing his gingerbread man is the winner!

Click here to print out the Roll a Gingerbread Man game.

The pre-drawn dotted gingerbread man would be helpful for the students if they roll a 3, 4, 5, or 6 before they’ve drawn the head or body. It gives them a point of reference to draw their face, arms, legs and buttons.

Gingerbread Glyph

The children colored a gingerbread man according to the directions given below:

Blue eyes: Girl

Green eyes: Boy

Red buttons: 5 years old

Orange buttons: 6 years old

Brown body: Likes cookies

Purple body: Does not like cookies

Then we drew conclusions and posted our Gingerbread Glyph in the hall.

Measuring Perimeter

  

Measuring Gingerbread Area

  

First Bite Gingerbread Graph

Gingerbread Man Counting/Patterning

These stackable men were purchased from Oriental Trading for counting activities.

Gingerbread Measurement (Non-standard Units)

I taped gingerbread cutouts together and the children found  something in the room that was the same length. This boy found that the chart holder is 6 gingerbread men tall.

He discovered that the big book was 4 gingerbread men long.

She noticed that her nametag was two gingerbread men long.

Social Studies

Gingerbread Family

The children dipped various size cookie cutters into paint to make their family members. When dry, they labeled them and wrote “I love my family” under the gingerbread family.

Using a Classroom Map to Find the Gingerbread Man

I made a map of our classroom for each student, mainly using shapes of objects in the room and a few places, such as desks, labeled. Before the students came into the room, I hid foam gingerbread men with each student’s name written on it. As I hid each man, I put an X on his/her map indicating the location of the gingerbread man with his/her name on it. The students used their map to find their own man. Most did this independently, but a few required some help. They loved this activity.

We’re searching for our Gingerbread Men.

Got him!

Making a School Map

After discussing the map of our classroom, we talked about the features of our school–halls outside the doors, classrooms and offices, steps at the end of the halls, and the large spaces such as the gym and library.

We took paper, pencils and clipboards and drew a map of each floor of our building.

This was one of the better ones. The hall is in the center, the classrooms are numbered, and there are steps at each end of the hall.

Next, I made a map with arrows for the children to follow to find the gingerbread man. I’d posted copies of the characters on the walls and the students followed the map to locate these characters.

The Old Woman

The Fox

Finally, the Gingerbread man was found outside this classroom.

Surprise! He left us a bag of gingerbread cookies.

Science

In most of the books the gingerbread man hops on to the fox’s back to cross the river. When he gets his feet wet, the gingerbread tells the fox that he’s “melting”. This student put a gingerbread cookie into a cup of water to see if it would really melt. The wet part of the cookie dissolved.

Art

Gingerbread Boy

Decorate a precut gingerbread boy.

Gingerbread Christmas Tree

Grocery bag gingerbread house:
Copycat Magazine, Nov/Dec 1995, pp. 4-9

Links

Gingerbread Five Day Thematic Unit

DLTK Gingerbread
Poem, crafts, coloring pages, clip art, recipes, math

Extension activities for Jan Brett’s “The Gingerbread Baby”

Gingerbread Man pattern

Gingerbread Baby Gameboard

The Gingerbread Man Book Study (Archived)
This unit contains books, songs, poems, language/group activities, math activities, learning centers, art activities, snacks, and internet resources.