Grades
PreK - K
The Sweetest Gingerbread Unit for Your Class
These festive gingerbread activities are perfect for the winter holidays.
The weeks leading into cold weather are the perfect time for some winter holiday fun. And no holiday lesson plan is complete without the sweetest theme of all: gingerbread!
Below, educator Brian Smith shares his favorite gingerbread activities which meet Common Core State Standards while invoking a festive spirit. Your students in grades PreK-K will love learning about a variety of subjects with these sweet holiday staples.
Throughout your gingerbread unit, be sure to read aloud some of the many classic, inventive, and silly gingerbread stories that young readers love. Try the popular books other teachers love below!
Jim Aylesworth, well-loved author of more than 20 books, joins forces with award-winning illustrator Barbara McClintock to create a traditional yet fresh rendition of this favorite tale.
It's winter, and Mouse is snuggled under the covers in her tiny, cozy home. Then - CRACK! - a fallen tree branch ruins her house, and Mouse must find another place to live. With courage, determination, and a lot of resourcefulness, Mouse - with help from a cheery bearded man in a red suit - finds not only another house but also a place she can truly call home.
Katy Bratun's warm text and bright illustrations are sure to delight readers young and old.
The youngest readers will be eager to experience these brightly colored books and to share time with Maisy and her irresistibly charming friends.
A Gingerbread House makes an excellent backdrop for notes as you discuss the characters, settings, and the beginning, middle, and end of every gingerbread story the class reads.
Read one gingerbread book each day, and as a class, document the characters, settings, refrain, and ending of each story.
Every day, the class should review the notes for the previous stories before starting a new one. Then, while filling in the details of the current day’s story, your students should compare it to the stories they already read.
You can incorporate the Super 3 research method (Plan, Do, Review) into your gingerbread unit by making gingerbread friends!
PLAN: For their “plan,” each student should draw a gingerbread friend they would like to make.
DO: After completing their friend, the student should take their drawing to the decorating area for the "do" step where they will use candies and colored icing to recreate their plan on a real gingerbread cookie.
REVIEW: After executing their plan, they should "review" it alongside their cookie and self-evaluate how their initial drawing and the final cookie compare.
In several versions of The Gingerbread Man fairy tale (including this one), the Gingerbread Man is outsmarted by a wily fox while crossing a river. Once your class is already familiar with the original story’s ending, start another read-aloud. As you near the end of the story, ask your class: “Now that the Gingerbread Man is on the fox in the water, is there a way that he could escape?”
Write down all the (very creative) answers your students come up with, and inevitably someone will suggest, “He should jump into the water.” Pretend that you haven’t considered this possibility and say, “We should do an experiment and see if this solution will work!”
The experiment is simple: Put a gingerbread cookie in a basin of water, and wait to see what happens! Ensure that each student sees the results by taking turns observing the bin. Have your students complete a data sheet to document their observations, predictions, and the outcome. They will discover that, alas, jumping into the water wouldn’t save the Gingerbread Man, as he would have crumbled into a soggy mess!
Gingerbread Men are infamous for running away, and you can stage your own classroom escape using an actual gingerbread cookie, a cardboard cutout, or even a gingerbread doll. Announce with great distress that your Gingerbread Man has gone missing, and you need the class’s help tracking him down.
Each student should create a “Lost Gingerbread Man” poster to hang in the hallway. They can decorate a pre-cut gingerbread man and write descriptive words that include where he should be returned if he is found.
While traveling through the halls the rest of the day, instruct your class to be on the lookout for the runaway cookie. But they need to be quiet, because if they make too much noise, he might run away again! At the end of the day, a very helpful teacher should bring the Gingerbread Man back to the classroom, saying that they found him thanks to all the posters the class made. What a relief!
At the end of your fun and festive gingerbread unit, there’s only one thing left to do: Read more sweet stories about gingerbread cookies!
Shop more books about gingerbread men and their friends below. You can find all books and activities at The Teacher Store.
A sweet mom bakes a very special cookie just for her daughter. But the Gingerbread Bear escapes, and runs all over Woodlands National Park! The Gingerbread Bear is quick and manages to escape everyone who tries to catch him. But when a clever park ranger, a few campers, and some wildlife friends all come together, perhaps this tricky treat can be tamed after all.
The cheeky little gingerbread man is having so much fun! He scurries away from Mr. and Mrs. Baker and all the hungry animals, but then he encounters a crafty fox. Will the gingerbread man meet a sticky end? With fresh and fun illustrations, this simple retelling of a classic fairy tale makes a great read for young and old alike!
It's time for Fairyland's annual bake-off! All three of the Superpigs are competing for a chance to win a magical key that can open any door in the city. Little do they know, the Big Bad Wolf also has a plan to win the key, one that involves his own confectionary creation -- the Gingerbread Man!
Still mourning the loss of their gingerbread boy, an old couple decide to make a gingerbread girl. Will the Gingerbread Girl learn from her brother's mistakes? Catch her if you can!
The Gingerbread Man runs as fast as he can in this fast-paced classic about a very determined little cookie!
Guess who gets to go along on a field trip to the firehouse? The Gingerbread Man! But when he falls out of his classmate's pocket, Spot the Dalmatian comes sniffing around.
Murray's adorable Gingerbread Man returns for the holiday season. This time, he works with his classmates to create gifts for the community workers. Not only is this a sweet book about the value of creating gifts with one's own hands, but also doing kind deeds for others. The inclusion of many different community helpers also makes it valuable book about jobs.
Lost on a fieldtrip, a smart cookie must complete a scavenger hunt to find his class in this graphic novel-style read-aloud.
Can the Ninjabread Man trick Ninja Bear, Ninja Snake, Ninja Mouse, and Ninja Fox? In the end, the clever Ninja Fox outsmarts the Ninjabread Man.This action-packed ninja adventure features a wise sensei, adorable ninja animals, and one hard-to-catch cookie, all brought to life by award-winning Dinotrux illustrator Chris Gall!
