Saturday 10 December 2011

Gingerbread Delight!

We had a fun-filled week full of gingerbread activities. If you have not purchased Deanna Jump's Gingerbread Unit, DO IT!! It is full of amazing activities! She has some freebies on her blog too.

So we started out by making our gingerbread journals. I followed Deanna's steps to make the gingerbread man, but for the booklet, I just folded a large piece of construction paper in half, stapled our activity pages inside, and rounded the top corners. It was so easy to make and a lot less cutting! The gingerbread boys and girls turned out so cute!


Here's a view of the inside of our activity books. It was a collection of gingerbread pages I've found from different resources.


Each day we read a different gingerbread book and filled in this chart from Deanna's unit.


During our writing time each day, students had to write a response about each of the books. If you would like to download my journal pages for these four books, you can click here.

 

We just finished our mapping unit in Social Studies, so I decided for a fun wrap up activity that would create a Gingerbread Town! I collected small milk cartons, covered them with brown construction paper (hot glued a strip around the bottom and two rectangles to the top... very easy!) and let the kids decorate them with crayons, markers, and pictures of candy! I found a photocopy page of a bunch of different candies from some gingerbread unit (maybe a Teacher Created Resources book) that they coloured and cut out. They placed their houses on the large map.



Using the compass on our map, we played a little game! I would draw names and the first person would take the little toy car to their house. The second person I drew would have to explain to the first student how to get to their house (using the cardinal directions). When they arrived, the second person would get the car and I would draw another name. The third person would then explain to the second person how to get to their house. We went until everyone got a turn to drive the car and give directions. It was so much fun and the kids were so engaged!!


What is a gingerbread unit without TASTING some gingerbread cookies!! We sat on the carpet with our gingerbread activity books and I passed out a cookie to everybody (store bought.... I don't have time to bake yet!! lol) with the instructions they could LOOK and SMELL, but NOOOOO eating!! Yes, I'm sooooo mean! ;)  We came up with some descriptive words about the gingerbread cookie.


After that, I allowed them have ONE bite! Then we graphed which part of the cookie we ate first (idea from Deanna's unit) in our graphing pocket chart. Students had Deanna's graph worksheets in their activity book, which they completed AFTER we ate the rest of our cookies :) If you would like my graph labels, you can download them here.


In Math we are practicing counting by 5's, so I created these gingerbread men activities to reinforce this skill. I started by handing out these gingerbread cards. The students had to rearrange themselves in order, from 5 to 100. Then we placed the cards in the pocket chart.


Then we did this little cut and paste activity that was a lot of fun. I gave each student 3 strips of brown construction paper (about 2x18") and they glued them together to make one LOOOOOONG strip (I think this was the fun part... working on the floor or on TWO desks). Then they got a page of gingerbread men that they had to cut out and glue in the correct counting by 5's order. We coloured them after.


Later in the week we did a little worksheet that had the students write the numbers out on the gingerbread men's tummies.


If you are interested in these gingerbread men counting by 5's activities, I put them together and put them in my TpT store for {free}. You can download them by clicking on the picture below.


I'm hoping to get my "Christmas Around the World" unit up on TpT this weekend. I'm starting the 9-day mini-unit on Monday with my class, and it will take me to next Thursday, the last day before Christmas break! Yahoo!! I can't wait to have 17 wonderful days of relaxing!

Happy weekend, everyone!

2 comments:

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  2. I had to delete my last comment. I am having some major problems with my mouse. lol Anyways... The gingerbread town is so cute! I love the little houses. Thank you for sharing your gingerbread freebie.
    First Grade Delight
    imgoingfirst@gmail.com

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