Gingerbread Learning Ideas

Gingerbread week is here and it is packed full of amazing learning activities to integrate the curriculum across as many subjects as possible. Check out these reading, math, science, and even art learning activities for Gingerbread week.

Rhyming Words

Lets start with these rhyming word gingerbread men. You can use some or all of the words to create a fun center or skill building activity. These would even go excellent inside a sensory table. Rhyming words can be so hard for little learners and it is important to be reviewing rhyming often. Additionally, constantly exposing students to more rhyming words is always a good idea. I have found that the stronger students are at rhyming, the stronger connections they can make with words when they are reading.
You can grab this gingerbread learning bundle here.

Gingerbread Puzzles

Puzzles are a great activity to complete with students. A mentor teacher once told me how it is one thing to be able to work on puzzles alone but quite another to work on puzzles with someone else. When you see a puzzle over a theme you teach and it is cheap, try to grab it and use it in your classroom. This puzzle was found on Scholastic Book Clubs years ago. It takes a lot of problem solving skills to work with others to complete puzzles. What a great skill to work on in kindergarten.

Number Fill Ins for Math

Number writing is not something we may not love at a young age, so we have to put a spin on it to make it more fun! Check out these leveled gingerbread math fill in. You can get all four versions to fill in different numbers. This can make sequencing and writing numbers much more inviting. The ones on the left are the hardest since it focuses on the numbers that come before the number given. The ones on the right have the middle number given and students write the number before and after it.
You can grab this gingerbread learning bundle here.

Gingerbread Man Biting Chart

Each week, we complete a whole group chart using our number sense skills. The goal is always to tie in as much curriculum as possible so we decided to chart what part of the gingerbread cookie we ate first. Some years, we actually bake gingerbread cookies, which is a TON of fun. Some years we do not get to bake them so I buy some and we use those. (I take into account food allergies and I get permission from families before doing this.)

For this activity, I start out by giving each child a gingerbread cookie and a die cut paper gingerbread. I ask them to take ONE bite of their cookie and then to stop. My little learners take their die cut paper gingerbread cookie and tear off the part of the cookie they ate. Then I let them finish eating their actual cookie.

Finally, we bring our paper cookies down to the carpet to make the chart like it is shown above. Now the math conversation begins.

Reading Comprehension Fun

You can easily find a dozen different books using the gingerbread theme. One of the skills we constantly work on is reading comprehension. We read a gingerbread themed book together, then we love to play reading comprehension games to see how we much we understand what we are reading.

How do we play these games? I grab a small, wooden die and some unifix cubes. Each student gets a different colored unifix cube and we place them all on start. We go around in a circle and one by one students answer questions about the book. If a student gets the question correct, they can roll the die and move that many places. If they get the question wrong, they do not get to roll or move.

Quick Data Trick: My little learners dont know how I keep a class list next to me and give correct answers a check and a wrong answer an x. I keep track of these games and data throughout the whole year. This is a FUN game for them and I dont want them stressed out at all. They dont have to know everything I do to collect the data I need.
You can grab this gingerbread learning bundle here.

Quick and Simple Science

I love when I learn from my students. One year a student asked me WHY the Gingerbread Man doesnt want to get wet in the books. The truth was, he had never seen or felt or tasted gingerbread so he had no concept of how a gingerbread man differed from a person.

I felt we needed a demonstration. First, I grab a little container and filled it with some water. We used this as our river. Next, we placed a little piece of graham cracker INTO the water to see what would happen. (At that moment, we didnt have gingerbread on hand, but you could easily do it with gingerbread.) I would be a liar if I told you my classroom was silent, because we are never silent. But we were full of wonder and curiosity. We slowly saw how the cracker or gingerbread man broke down in the water.

Finally, this would make an awesome STEM activity. Provide students with a small tub of water and have them create a boat to hold the gingerbread man to keep him dry to cross the river. Tests could be performed with gingerbread men cookies.

Number Sense Gingerbread Houses

Check out these gingerbread houses. This was something my whole team created before I came to this school, so I cant take the credit for the idea. These houses are created for place value fun. First, start with the house and add a door and chimney. Next, add the candy. (The candy cane stick serves as a ten and the gumball is a one.) Then, the little learners counts up your candy and add that number to the chimney. Last, add some cotton to the roof.

This year, we swapped our math standards. This year we are doing shapes this time of year so I made a shape gingerbread house instead. I will show you pictures once we are completely done with them.

Make a Gingerbread Man

Making a gingerbread man art project can be really simple and cheap. I got a simple template and make some tracers using file folders. Students were going to trace their gingerbread man onto the tan copy paper. Then, I had some simple decorations out for them to use.

You can see the google eyes, but let me show you how I made the little decoration pieces for cheap. I took card stock and decorative scissors. I cut the design over and over again like shown above, making sure the design is a good size for the gingerbread arms and legs. Then, I take some regular scissors to cut upward. All these pieces go into the sorting tray for students to use. I also gave them some basic colored pieces in black and orange so they could create anything they wanted on their man.

Gingerbread Houses

In my classroom, we go straight from our gingerbread theme to Christmas Around the World. What a great time to create gingerbread houses. You can see my classroom set up on the left hand side. We have our houses ready on the left side. We have a plate of candy to decorate with in the middle. Last year, we had some kind of crazy sickness hit the classroom the day before, so I had 5 students out for gingerbread house day. We made sure we made them to go houses so they could make theirs at home as well.

I will detail more about how we do gingerbread houses soon. Stay tuned.

Looking for More Gingerbread Themed Learning Ideas?

You can check out this Gingerbread Bundle here on TpT.

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