Your kindergarteners may run as fast as the gingerbread man, but they can't escape the excitement of a unit based on this classic story. The gingerbread man theme works well with many academic areas while adding creativity to your classroom. With a little effort, you can base all of your lesson plans around the book.
Adding It Up
The gingerbread man theme spices up your math lessons with engaging activities that teach basic kindergarten number concepts. Use gingerbread shapes for various activities, such as making patterns, measuring, counting and adding. For a pattern activity, give students several gingerbread cutouts with different features. Have them lay out the shapes to create patterns. For measurement, give each child gingerbread men that are 1 inch tall. The kids use the shapes to measure various objects in the room. The cutouts also work as counters. Or make a math matching game. Write a number on one gingerbread man and dots depicting that number on another. Students match the pairs.
Read All About It
Reading the story of "The Gingerbread Man" is an obvious activity for this theme, but other reading and literacy activities expand the learning from the book. Read different versions of the classic story, such as "The Gingerbread Baby" by Jan Brett, "The Gingerbread Pirates" by Kristin Kladstrup or "The Gingerbread Girl" by Lisa Campbell Ernst. Create a chart to compare the components of each story. Having the students retell the stories or act out the actions reinforces comprehension. Another way to extend literacy learning from the book is to have the kids make their own version of the book.
Gingerbread man art activities add a creative component to learning from the story. One option is to have the kids design their own gingerbread men cut from brown paper. Let them add the details with art supplies. To add a learning component, turn the gingerbread picture into a glyph where the specific features represent something about the student. For example, the color of the gingerbread man's eyes might represent the number of siblings the student has. Create a legend for each feature. For an edible version, mix up a batch of gingerbread as a class. Once baked, the kids get to frost and decorate the gingerbread men before eating them. Gingerbread man puppets give the kids a prop for retelling the story.
A physical component keeps the kids moving while enjoying "The Gingerbread Man." One option is a scavenger hunt that sends the kids in search of the missing gingerbread man. Set up clues around the school that lead to a large gingerbread man cutout. If you bake real gingerbread men with the class, have someone hide the pan of baked cookies with a note that gives the first clue to find the runaway cookies. Another game to get the kids moving is a variation of freeze dance. Tape gingerbread cutouts to the floor. While music plays, the kids dance around the cutouts. When it stops, the kids run to a cutout.
- Thomas Northcut/Photodisc/Getty Images