Gingerbread Man Theme

Math, Art, Fine Motor Ideas:

We created a giant gingerbread house.  I made sure all of the students had a chance to decorate it somehow.  We had two groups working on patterns and coloring the candy cane.  We then had three different groups painting the house.  One group finger painted the white snow on the roof and isicle handprints dangling from the roof.  Another group made green handprints around the door for greenery.  The last group made thumbprint berries on the greenery (holly leaves). (We did all this in two days.)

We fingerpainted chocolate pudding on giant gingerbread men.  We then decorated the men with candy.  We then measured these men with unifix cubes and estimated how big we thought they were with yarn.

We painted watercolor gumdrops and added glitter as extra decorations on and around the house.

We colored red and white peppermint paper plates.  (A great listening and pattern idea! They made a + first on there plate.  Then they drew an X through the plus.  They colored every other spot red to make it look like peppermints.  We used these as signs and windows for our house.

We played number word bingo and number recognition bingo.  The words/numbers were written on the inside of a gingerbread man. You can do this with letters or sight words as well.

We practiced directional words by placing a gingerbread man that was taped to a popsicle stick to the spot that was said.  (above, below, under, beside, next to, etc.)

Writing:
The students decorated a gingerbread man and wrote a sentence describing their man or woman.

We practiced writing 2 and 5 on a gingebread man to help us learn how to write each correctly.  For example for 2: Start on left eye, round to nose, down to the left side of mouth and across mouth. For 5: Start on right eye, go to left eye, down to left part of nose, around to right side of mouth and across mouth to the left.

We labeled gingerbread men body parts.

Working with Words/Letters:
We played gingerbread men letter matching.  They flipped over two men and tried to match uppercase letters with lowercase letters.

We played word flip.  Using a spatula, we flipped a gingerbread man and read the sight word on the man. 

We played number word bingo. The words were written on the inside of a gingerbread man. You can do this with letters or sight words as well.



Dramatic Play:
We had dress up clothes for students to dress up like gingerbread man. 

We had a story box with the characters laminated on popsicle sticks for the students to retell the story. 

We had a gingerbread man cookie sheet to make gingerbread men with play dough as well as had cookie cutters to make them.