Raise your hand if you love gingerbread activities and stories! There are so many versions of the story that lend themselves to some great literacy activities as well as learning about different cultures—comparing and contrasting, sequencing, problem/solution, and more! And they’re fun. And kids love the gingerbread stories. For our gingerbread week, we use our Read It UP! Gingerbread Man creation!
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Gingerbread Activities: Reading Comprehension
You can read different versions of the gingerbread stories and make a large story map to compare and contrast the versions! Here are a few examples of our story maps!
Students also do their own story map.
Another compare and contrast lesson is to make a Venn diagram to compare different versions of the story!
Another great comprehension lesson for gingerbread week is to sequence a story!
Students can then choose their favorite version of the story and write about it!
Another fun writing activity is to have students brainstorm what they would run away from if they were a gingerbread. We do a turn and talk to brainstorm, then we share out to make our graphic organizer and finally the kids write and draw. And yes, one year, someone said: “I would run away from my penis.” True story.
You can even label the gingerbread man and gingerbread girl!
STEM Activities
Gingerbread week is packed full of ideas for STEM activities! Two of our favorites are float and sink and making a boat to save the gingerbread! Ya’ll. Aluminum foil and a cookie are all it takes to bring the story to life. The kids love this activity. Keep it simple. December is crazy enough, so just keep it simple.
Math Lessons
Give your kids a gingerbread cookie and have them take 1 bite. Graph which body part they took a bite off.
Gingerbread cookies are the perfect math tool. And eating cookies is perfect for subtraction. We did this lesson whole group and then the students did their own story problem.
Art Projects
Do all the art projects. Decorate your classroom and hallways for your ginger bread week. It’s December and the kids are LIT so the more art projects the better!
Simple. Cut a circle. Add details!
For this project, I drew the gingerbread and the kids used watercolors to paint!
This one is definitely my favorite project: the gingerbread man in the oven. The clear part is wax paper!
Disguise A Gingerbread Activity
For this disguise a gingerbread activity, let’s keep it simple. Seriously. It’s a crazy time of year so simple is a must. You can do hats or posters or both! Students choose their disguise and color! Simple! The hats are adorable when kids wear them and the posters make a cute but EASY December door decoration or disguise a gingerbread bulletin board!
Gingebread Week Center Activities
Sensory Bins
For our sensory bin, we made grown rice scented with ginger! We added some ornaments from Amazon and used our Gingerbread Superheroes resource to differentiate the learning!
Green Screen Photos And Costumes
We love our green screen pictures because the kids legit think it’s some sort of magic! For our green screen pictures I just placed the kids in front of a gingerbread house!
And of course there is a costume!
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For more Christmas and December fun, check out these posts:
