The Gingerbread Man

I think the Gingerbread Man is my favourite fairy tale to study. I usually spend the whole month of December reading and comparing different versions of the Gingerbread Man. We started on Monday this week, so from now until Christmas Break we will read a total of 19 Gingerbread Man books. My students always love them! They can't wait to see which one we'll read each day.

I love making a large Gingerbread House to keep track of the different books we read. The title cards on the side came from an old Gingerbread unit from Deanna Jump. The decorations are just enlarged clipart from KPM Doodles. I printed off covers of all the books and tape them to the top of the chart each day. Then after we read the story, we write down the characters (in order of appearance), the refrain (repeated part), and the ending. We include a :) or :( depending on the ending for the Gingerbread character!

Here are my favourite 20 versions of the Gingerbread Man. (Click the links below to find them on Amazon.ca through my affiliate link.):

1. The Gingerbread Man - retold by Catherine McCafferty 

2. The Gingerbread Girl - Lisa Campbell Ernst

3. The Gingerbread Boy - Richard Egielski 

4. The Gingerbread Cowboy - Janet Squires

5. The Gingerbread Bear - Robert Dennis

6. The Ninjabread Man - Katrina Charman

7. The Ninjabread Man -  C J Leigh

8. Gingerbread Man Superhero! - Dotti Enderle

9. Gingerbread Baby - Jan Brett

10. Keep Running, Gingerbread Man!: A Story About Keeping Active - Steve Smallman

11. The Sourdough Man: An Alaska Folktale - Cherie Stihler 

12. Kolobok: The Small Round Bun - Olha Tkachenko

13. The Musubi Man: Hawai'i's Gingerbread Man - Sandi Takayama 

14. Stop That Pickle! - Peter Armour

15. The Stinky Cheese Man - Jon Scieszka

16. The Library Gingerbread Man - Dotti Enderle

17. The Gingerbread Man Loose in the School - Laura Murray

18. Catch That Cookie! - Hallie Durand

19. The Gingerbread Kid Goes to School - Joan Holub

20. The Gingerbread Man 2: What Happened Later? - Stephen Dixon

What Have We Been Up To? Monthly Update

How is it December already?? I swear I was just getting my classroom set up last week. I can't believe it. I also haven't blogged in almost two months.... ugh! Sorry about that! I've had so many good intentions, but life just gets in the way! Oh well, here's a quick recap of some stuff we have done since I last blogged...

We had pumpkin day and costume day. I was the hot dog from the Pop See Ko 2.0 video! (Any Go Noodle fans here??)

I also presented my first solo PD session--Engaging and Interactive Science Ideas! Eeek! I got some positive feedback, so hopefully I didn't come off as nervous as I felt!

We learned about peace, war, and Remembrance Day. We made these scrapbook poppy artworks.

We had report cards and parent teach conferences. We put up a board of all the reasons why we Go Noodle so parents can see why we do it! It's also a place to keep track of our maxed out champs! :)

On December 1st our classroom elf made a visit! Santa delivered a present for us with our elf, the book, voting tags, and elf notebooks (from Mel D's The Ultimate Classroom Elf Kit). We voted and our elf's name is "The Good Elf". So creative. lol

We actually started our Christmas Around the World unit two weeks ago. We have been having so much fun!! We've traveled to Mexico, Brazil, France, Italy, and South Africa.

Each day we fill in a page in our scrapbook, add a stamp to our suitcase, and make a craft to go with it! Here's a look at our poinsettias, tinsel-tail birds, and yule logs! So much fun and a great way to keep the kiddos engaged until Christmas!

I also saw this life-size gingerbread house over at Mrs. Goff's Pre-K Tales and knew that the giant boxes sitting in my basement would be put to good use! I cut the pieces at home, shoved them in the backseat of my little Civic, and then assembled it at school. My kiddos love it! I printed out some decorations to colour and set out some scrap paper/art supplies for my students to make for the gingerbread whenever they have spare time. It's looking pretty cute so far. They even decorate the inside!

We're reading and comparing fifteen of my favourite gingerbread stories this month! It's pretty sad that I have even more than 15 versions though.... I can't help it! I just love the stories! :)

That's about it! We've got two weeks until Christmas break. I have not even started my Christmas shopping yet, so I better get on that soon. Have a happy Monday tomorrow!

New Fairy Tale Packs

If you are a fan of my 3 Little Pigs and Goldilocks Reading & Writing Mini-Units {blogged about them here}...

  

Then you will love my two newest packs... Gingerbread Man and Little Red Riding Hood! All of these packs feature the same reading and writing activities, but are adapted for the certain fairy tale. You can use any version of the stories that you have. Each pack includes a book list of examples of the different versions you can find! Check them out at TpT by clicking on the pictures below...

Christmas Goodies {Bunch of Freebies}

12 more days 'til Christmas!! 6 more days of school!! Yee haw! So excited! Here are a few pics of the Christmas fun I've been doing at home. We tried to get the puppies to pose in front of the Christmas tree. This was the best shot we got. Bella is just staring intently at the treat. Hehe.

These were the cake pops I made this past weekend for a Christmas potluck with our friends. They were a big hit! I've made cake pops three times so far... this batch was the best yet! They take a lot of time, but so cute and so delicious!

After seeing these shirts on Pinterest, I had to order some! These are my ugly Christmas t-shirts from Vardagen. Love them!! Can't wait to wear them next week. I'm going to wear something Christmas-y each day next week. I also have a Grinch shirt, a "real" ugly Christmas sweater, and some reindeer antlers. Gotta spread the Christmas cheer!

And finally, here is my Christmas tree all prettied up. The presents are all wrapped up and waiting for Christmas now! This was take 2 of the Christmas tree. The day after we put it up, the tree fell over and all the lights and decorations fell off. Some even broke :( At least we got to decorate the tree twice, right? I am never going to be one of those people with the matchy-matchy tree, all in one beautiful colour scheme. No, sir! My tree has colourful lights and the most random collection of ornaments you will find--from Winnipeg Jets candy canes to a Mickey Mouse made out of walnuts to random ornaments from students of the past. I love it just the way it is! :)

Alright, onto some school-related Christmas fun! We finished up our Gingerbread unit. Look at all these books we read! We did a little tally on the side of our chart to see which book was the favourite in the class--The Gingerbread Girl won us over! The Gingerbread Cowboy was a close second. We just liked saying, "Giddy up!"

We decorated our own gingerbread houses using stickers, construction paper, and markers. They turned out pretty cute. Then we did some writing about the houses. You can download the writing paper from {here}. Candy clipart border is from KPM Doodles.

You can see some of our cute tissue paper trees. I give them the outline of a tree on manilla tag. Then they "modge podge" (glue/water mixture) tissue paper squares all over the tree. We cute them out and decorate with a BIT of glitter glue. So easy and so cute!

We also did Abby's "wet gingerbread" experiment (found for free here). We made predictions and observed what happens when a gingerbread man gets wet! Here's our soggy gingerbread man. Eew!

I had this colour by sight word worksheet from Kroger's Kindergarten (found for free here). I wanted to do a fun little activity to practice the sight words before we did the colouring page, so I made these sight word scramble cards. The letters for each sight word are printed on separate cards with a matching picture. I randomly passed out the letter cards and the students had to find the other students with matching pictures, then unscramble the letters to make a sight word! It was super fun and engaging! If you are interested, you can download the sight word cards {here}. Christmas clipart is from KPM Doodles.

Finally, we did some Christmas patterns today! I printed the patterns on 11x17" paper, so the Christmas items were really big. Students had to colour each row of items in a different pattern. It was good review on creating patterns. You can download the page {here}. This was actually a nice, relaxing activity this afternoon as we listened to some Christmas carols on the iPod. :)

Last up, I want to share a new freebie packet I made for TpT. It's called "Snowman Counting & Number Activities". I'm going to use one of the activities next week and then use the other ones when we get back from Christmas break. That's the great thing about snowmen--they can be used anytime, from November-February (at least where I live!! hehe). Click the picture below to check it out at TpT!

Inside the pack there are snowman cards from 0-100.

 And there are six different activity sheets to go with the number cards:

1. What comes next? -- counting on forwards
2. What comes before? -- counting backwards
3. Snowman Order -- ordering from least to greatest
4. Before and After -- numbers one less and one more
5. Greater Than or Less Than -- comparing numbers
6. Snowman Counting -- counting forward to 100

The great thing about these activities is they are so easy to differentiate! Just pass out different sets of number cards to each group, depending on their level (ie. 1-30, 1-50, or 1-100). Easy peasy! I hope you enjoy this pack! Happy Friday tomorrow, everyone! :)

Getting ready for Christmas!

How can you tell it's the beginning of December? Let me count the ways...

First up... Farley's Currently! Link yourself up at Oh' Boy 4th Grade and don't forget the rule or three.

Second... Christmas is in the air! I put up some Christmas decorations before leaving school on Friday. Even Pete the Cat, Pigeon, Gerald, and Piggie are sporting some Christmas hats. The bf and I started our Christmas advent calendars... yum! Our house has lights and some presents are wrapped. Just need a tree to bring it all together!

Third... We started our gingerbread study this week. I love reading all the varieties of stories and filling in this chart from Mrs. Jump's Gingerbread Man unit.

We read Mrs. Jump's adorable gingerbread emergent reader (free here). Instead of the students drawing themself eating the cookie, I made a large-sized gingerbread man and took their picture "eating" the cookie. The pictures turned out so cute and the kids loved seeing themselves at the end of the book!

And last... I created two new Christmas units for my TpT store. The first one is a pack of five word work centers that I plan to use during our Daily 5 time. There is stamping, rhyming, sentence scrambling, making words, and writing the room. Click the picture to check it out at TpT.

I am super excited about the second unit. It is a letter and postcard writing unit I will be using during Writer's Workshop. I plan to read "The Jolly Christmas Postman" by Janet Ahlberg. The unit contains mini lessons such as why we write letters, who writes letters, parts of a friendly letter, who to write to, what to write about, parts of a postcard, and how to write postcards. You can use this unit in many ways.... writing letters to Santa (or other North Pole friends), sending postcards to your classroom "Elf on the Shelf", or using it as a reader response and writing a letter/postcard to a story character (ie. Olive the Other Reindeer or Rudolph). Click the picture to check it out at TpT.

Happy Christmas preparations! :)

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!