Home Preschool Unit: The Gingerbread Man

12.21.2011

Well, our themes this week have been Christmas Trees, Reindeer, and the most recently, The Gingerbread Man.  I have "Run, run, run as fast as you can, you can't catch me, I'm the Gingerbread Man" stuck in my head : )  Here's a few snippets of what we did....
Invitation to Create: Paint a Gingerbread Man.  
I cut a Gingerbread Man shape from an empty box.
I poured different colored paint into an egg carton, grabbed buttons, glitter, and stickers and let him loose!!
--AN Word Family worksheet:  I had T use our Melissa and Doug ABC puzzle; we went thru the whole alphabet looking for words.  He did a great job reading the words, too!
Sight Word Gingerbread Man-- coloring the sight words.

Gingerbread Words-- using the letters from "Gingerbread," T put together real and nonsense words.  I found this idea on TpT and just made the cards myself with index cards and stickers-- my printer is running out of ink. 
Dear Santa, Please bring me printer ink for Christmas this year! 
I need to print more "school" stuff!
Gingerbread Ordinal Numbers:  I read the directions and T found the letter he was to color.  Great practice!
Gingerbread Coordinates:  I revamped the original idea I saw on Pinterest.  Using a grid (x, y-axis) and dice, it is basically played as Tic Tac Toe.  I used our candy striped tape and made gingerbread men to stay in our theme.  T has been into playing Tic Tac Toe lately, so I thought this would be a fun "learning" game.  He already knows how to find coordinates because of his Toy Story Leapster game, but it was fun anyhow!  We both won a couple of times.  I only made 6 gingerbread for each of us, and would make more next time.
Gingerbread Area and Perimeter Activity:  This idea was from TpT, too!  Gotta love it!  Using our painted gingerbread man, we used cotton balls and crackers to find the area and perimeter.  When I asked why it took so many crackers vs. cotton balls for both activities, T said, "the shape....  (after more prodding), the cracker is a hexagon."  While it's not the answer I was looking for; he's just so sweet and smart!
Food Fail!
Uh-Oh!  The Gingerbread Man didn't jump out of the oven fast enough!  
Finally, we made a Gingerbread House!  So fun!  And what a tricky thing to hold together... our roof and walls kept caving in!  But alas, here it is : )
More Gingerbread Links:
Gingerbread Love from Blogland-- a SLEW of resources pulled together on one page! 
Gingerbread Theme Ideas @ Mrs. Attaya's First Grade Blog
Gingerbread Part 1 and 2 @ Growing Kinders
Gingerbread ABC's and 123's @ Kreative in Kinder (T completed the missing numbers worksheet).
Gingerbread Man Decoration-- we didn't do this craft, but I thought it was pretty cute!
I'd love for you to follow along so you never miss out on one of our fun activities we share at School Time Snippets!
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