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‘Tis the season for gingerbread! One of my favorite kindergarten units for December uses a variety of gingerbread themed literacy and math activities. In this post, I’m sharing my favorite gingerbread activities for kindergarten that will help you plan a festive thematic unit study for your classroom!
There are many different variations of the gingerbread man story, so you can use this variety as part of your literacy instruction! Throughout the week, you can read several gingerbread picture books and create an anchor chart for each story. In this post, you’ll notice printables and activities based on different gingerbread books by Karen Schmidt, Jim Aylesworth, Brenda Parkes, and Lisa Ernst.
After reading and discussing different gingerbread stories, students can review and practice story sequencing. These printable sequencing activities are perfect for creating a visual representation of each story.
Another fun literacy activity to complete with students is to compare and contrast different gingerbread stories! You can create a Venn diagram as a class, then students can complete their own worksheets with this cut and paste activity!
Once students have had a chance to read and discuss different gingerbread books, they’ll probably be ready to write about them! Your students will love creating these cute oven-shaped books. They will write about which story was their favorite between The Gingerbread Man and The Gingerbread Girl. Then they will write about how their favorite story ended.
After writing about their favorite gingerbread story, students will be ready to write their own! This creative writing project comes with different graphic organizers to help students plan their stories. The fun gingerbread craft makes a perfect cover for each story!
You can also bring some gingerbread fun to your phonics practice! You can place gingerbread cards around the classroom and tell students that there are gingerbread men on the loose! As students find each card, they can write down each CVC word on the recording sheet.
Finally, your students can create their own gingerbread glyph and writing project. Students will answer a variety of questions in their mini books, which also serves as the key for the gingerbread glyph. For example, if they like the taste of gingerbread, they will write their answer in the mini book and add a red nose to their gingerbread person. If they don’t, they will add a yellow nose.
Students can practice counting and addition with these gingerbread themed mini readers! One option has students count the number of gingerbread men and gingerbread girls pictured on each page, then complete the sentences and equation. The other option has completed sentences that students will illustrate by adding the correct number of gingerbread men and gingerbread girls before writing and solving the addition equation.
Give your students a chance to practice story problems with this interactive addition book! Students will be able to illustrate and solve four different gingerbread themed word problems using addition.
These addition practice mats are a hands-on and engaging way to help students understand and practice addition. You can tell an addition story to your students, then have them act it out on their mats. After placing the gingerbread manipulatives in the correct place, students can document the sum or even write a complete number sentence. This is a great way to individualize for the needs of the students in your class!
For a more independent addition mat activity that you can use during centers, you can use these dice rolling addition mats. Students will roll two dice, record the number of dots, and then solve the addition equation.
You can continue the gingerbread addition practice with these printable addition worksheets. Students can use the boxes above each gingerbread man as a space to draw dots, which will help them solve each problem.
This fun math craft is a great way for students to show off what they’ve been learning about addition! They will create their own cookie sheet craft with aluminum foil, then complete a sentence and addition equation to go with it. This makes a fun bulletin board display during the winter months!
You can’t have a gingerbread unit without a gingerbread taste test! Give each student a gingerbread man to eat, but stop after the first bite to ask which part of the gingerbread man they tried first.
You can create a class graph to keep track of the results from your taste test. Then students can create their own individual graph to record and summarize the data.
Another fun way to practice addition is with a roll and cover dice game! Students can roll two dice, count the total number of dots, and then color or cover the corresponding number on the gingerbread man! They will continue to play until all of the sums have been covered. Students have so much fun with this game that they don’t even realize they’re hard at work!
All of the engaging activities shown above are included in my bundle of math and literacy gingerbread activities for kindergarten. Also included in this bundle is a unit-at-a-glance summary to help you map out these fun activities over the course of the thematic unit study. This will help you create a cohesive unit of gingerbread fun for your students!
If you’d like to take a closer look at everything included in this bundle, you can find it in the A Spoonful of Learning shop or on Teachers Pay Teachers.
I hope that these activity ideas have given you some inspiration for your next unit study for December! If you’d like to find these gingerbread activities later, be sure to save this post! Just add the pin below to your favorite teaching board on Pinterest. You’ll be able to quickly find these activities whenever you’re looking for some seasonal fun for your kindergarten classroom!
These alphabet books will have students dive deep into learning about each letter of the alphabet while eager to see what activity they get to complete next!
