Gingerbread Friends and More

"Gingerbread Friends" by Jan Brett

I'm not sure if all of you know, but Gingerbread Friends by Jan Brett is the sequel to Gingerbread Baby.  It picks up where the gingerbread baby is living in the house that Mattie made for him, and he's happy except for when Mattie goes out with his friends.  So the gingerbread baby goes out into the wide world to find somebody to play with.  This is such a cute story!  He goes to a bakery and sees many decorations, but none of them are alive like he is.  When he comes back home, Mattie shows his love for him by baking him many gingerbread friends.  This book is really lovely for this time of year.

I always make gingerbread houses at this time of year.  Here is a little gift to you, if you'd like to use a guided reading book.  This is one of my children's favorite books, because they really feel like it connects to what we're about to do.  We discuss the sequence of building the house before we actually make it.  It helps SO much!  I think it's really important that kindergarten students have a clear picture of what we want them to do.  Years ago, I did this project without using the book, and I can honestly tell you the houses come out much nicer with the instructions.
My Gingerbread House Big 2

Another thing I like to do at this time of year is make sight words really fun and accessible to my kids.  So I made this Christmas tree where the children have to match the sight word ornaments to the words that are already on it.  I did it first in large group, and they went crazy for it.  They begged me to put it in the ABC center!  Since it's laminated, I did put it in the center, and they've been recognizing sight words all week.  Below are the ornaments in PowerPoint format so that you can make it your own.  What I did was cut a green tree from posterboard and put it on black backing for contrast.  Then I printed the white ornaments on sticker paper, cut them, and attached them to the tree.  Next, I laminated the finished tree and then put velcro above each of the words.  I printed the colorful ornaments, laminated them, cut them, and then put velcro on the back of each one.  Then it was ready to go!

Sight Word Christmas Tree

Sight Word Christmas Tree


I also wanted to tell you that I just put up Christmas Guided Reading Books and Winter Sight Word Board Games on TPT, and I think they're two of the best products I've ever made, mostly because they were inspired by the wishes of children in my class.  If you have time, take a look and let me know what you think.

Gingerbread Integration

My pre-k students really enjoy the fact that they can go to Library Center and pick up a book to read by themselves.  I made this very simple gingerbread counting book for just that purpose.

Number Gingerbread Man Book

I read the book to my students during guided reading, and I also had gingerbread cookies for them to count.  They placed the correct amount of cookies on each laminated page of the book.  I also found a great song on iTunes by Tiana called "The Gingerbread Men."  The song counts backwards from 5 and includes a pretty neat rhyming pattern.  One additional thing that I did with the song was to give my students gingerbread number cards.  Throughout the song, as each gingerbread man got eaten the student holding that number gave it to me.

The Gingerbread Girl

I've collected gingerbread books for many years.  My girls often ask me, after we finish reading The Gingerbread Boy, if there is one about a gingerbread girl.  There is, and it's really cute.

Book cover of The Gingerbread Girl

For fine motor practice, I have my students draw gingerbread boys and gingerbread girls (whichever one they choose).  I have found, however, that pre-k students will often tell me "I don't know how to draw it."  So I've made two books that sequence the steps of putting on the eyes, nose, etc.: My Gingerbread Boy and My Gingerbread Girl (pictured below).

"My Gingerbread Girl" Book

Gingerbread Baby Book

I love reading gingerbread books around this time of year.  They're so perfect to read in public school because they don't have any religious or commercial agendas.

Book cover of Gingerbread Baby

Gingerbread Baby especially is a wonderful book because it talks about the fact that it was a cold day, and it would be really nice to make gingerbread.  I went to the grocery store and got cinnamon sticks and ginger root, as well as gingerbread cookies.  Before reading the book, my assistant and I gave each child an opportunity to smell the cinnamon stick and the ginger root.  Since most of my students speak Spanish as their primary language, the more opportunities that I can give them for vocabulary development, the better their language becomes.  We received some wonderful responses from the kids, such as "That smells like pie or cookies!" and "My mom puts that on my toast."

We read the book, pausing to ask the students what they thought the main character, Mattie, was doing after the gingerbread baby ran away.  One boy said "He was making another gingerbread baby."  A girl said that Mattie was making a gingerbread girl so she wouldn't run away.  Another student thought that Mattie was making a whole family.  What great responses!  I was so surprised that one of my students even said that Mattie was making a house for the gingerbread boy, which was exactly what Mattie was doing in the book.  We asked that student why he thought Mattie was making a house, and he replied "Well, because he doesn't have his own house."

Following our discussion of the book, we did a great song by Jack Hartmann called "The Gingerbread Man," in which the children got to act out the story.  They pretended that they were characters from the story, skipping, running, hopping on top of the fox, and finally eating the gingerbread cookie that had been placed in their hand in the beginning.