Gingerbread Goodies: Teachers That Give Blog Hop

This time of year is so much fun. There are a ton of awesome winter themes that can be used in the classroom. But my favorite winter theme is gingerbread. I love the way it smells. Plus, the kids love making gingerbread and decorating gingerbread men.  Big kids get just as into gingerbread as little kids. It works across grade levels.  Best of all, it’s holiday-ish, but since it’s not directly related to any holiday, all of the kids can participate.

Of course, if you’re going to do this theme, you’ve got to at least decorate some gingerbread men or houses.

Today, I made gingerbread men at home with my children. It was loads of fun—well, except when my toddler knocked over a large glass bowl in the middle of waiting for the dough to chill. Yikes! Thank goodness I was wearing shoes!

Once we got that cleaned up, the girls had a blast decorating their gingerbread men. Eating them afterward wasn’t too shabby either.

This is the recipe we used. We got 10 cookies out of it, but if you’re not cooking with a toddler who keeps sneaking the dough to use like Playdough, you’d probably get a few more. Still, if you’re making the recipe for a classroom, you’ll want to double or triple it.

Gingerbread Books For Kids

The Gingerbread Boy is a classic story that your children may already be familiar with. If not, there are lots of read-alouds of it on YouTube, like this one. I like to read some other books too. (Affiliate links)

Jan Brett, one of my favorite children’s authors, wrote The Gingerbread Baby.   The illustrations are gorgeous. (Just like all of her other books.)  In this version of the story, he doesn’t get eaten. There’s a surprise ending that’s lots of fun.

Gingerbread Friends is another story by Jan Brett. The gingerbread baby gets lonely. So, he goes on a hilarious adventure to make new friends.

A third great read for any gingerbread unit is The Gingerbread Boy by Richard Egielski.  It offers a modern twist and a different setting (New York City). Fun!

It’s easy to incorporate writing as well.  You can use the books as an intro to having the kids write their own version of the classic story.  Why not encourage them to change to setting or add a new ending to make their own version?  Letting them illustrate their writing and share it is a great way to wrap up before the winter break.

Gingerbread Math Activities

Since this is one of my favorite themes, I made a few math activities to go with it too. Now, I’m excited to share them with you.

If you teach the younger grades, they might really enjoy practicing their addition facts by playing some gingerbread cover-up.

For this low-prep game, you’ll need some dice and the game board. The kids roll two dice and add them. Then, they cover up the sum on the game board. The player who has the most spots covered at the end wins.

Those of you teaching older kids can use this freebie with two activities.  The first activity is simply a multiplication chart to fill in. I don’t know about you, but I always find kids need tons of practice to memorize multiplication facts. The second activity is a mixed review of addition and subtraction. Once they’ve completed the problems, they color it to reveal a gingerbread man.

The multiplication and mixed practice sheets are samples I pulled out of my gingerbread math review pack, which covers every third-grade Common Core Standard in math.  If you’re interested in it, you can check it out here at my TPT store.

Anyway, I hope you have a lot of fun exploring the gingerbread theme with your class.  It’s one of my all-time favorite themes, and I hope your class enjoys it too!