Gingerbread Ideas

· Use geometric shapes from Van de Walle book and have students compose a gingerbread house. Have them write about the shapes they used to make their house.

· Decompose numbers using the gingerbread boy pattern and buttons or two-color counters. Tell students how many buttons go on his body. They show with two colors and write or tell you the number sentence that matches the picture.

· Use the Gingerbread House Mat for practice with problem solving and positional words. Use small gingerbread men for your manipulatives.

· Gather data for a graph by giving students a gingerbread cookie. Have them take a bite. Don’t tell them which part to bite. Then make a graph of the body part they bit off. You can use a paper version instead of the cookie if you wish.

· Use the addition/subtraction mat to model addition and subtraction facts to 5.

· Use the Gingerbread Men Ten Frames for the various ten frame activities in Moodle.

· Use geometric shapes to make a gingerbread man glyph.

· Use this link to Jan Brett’s page for a game board you can download and print: www.janbrett.com/games/gingerbread_baby_board_game

· Use the Gingerbread House Frame to practice two dimensional shapes. Kids “decorate” their houses with pattern blocks or geometric shapes. Or use the ten frames and the key. The students pick a ten frame and choose the corresponding shape to add to their house.

· Gingerbread Game from Math Wire

· File Folder Center Idea: Make a “pan” by covering a file folder with foil. Write numbers onto gingerbread man shapes. Glue gingerbread man shapes onto the “pan”. Make various game pieces for matching. ( number words, ten frames, dot cards, geometric shapes, number sentences)

· Use play dough and a large gingerbread man cookie cut. Students roll out play dough and cut out a gingerbread man. A partner closes their eyes while they use small pattern blocks or 3D shapes to make an impression into their man. The partner tries to guess which shape made the impression into their play dough man.

· Here are some gingerbread ideas from the prekinders website

· Pompom Gingerbread Man More or Less – Give students the gingerbread man pattern with the circles. Make sets of cards with numbers and colored dots (use only 3 colors). Shuffle the cards. Students pick a card and place that many pompoms in that color on their man. Continue taking turns until all circles are colored. Compare the number of colors on each. Fill in the graph to show which you have the most or least of. You could also use skittles or M&Ms instead of pompoms.

· Subitizing Gingerbread Men – Copy onto brown construction paper and use the men to order them, compare, match to numbers,etc…