My absolute favorite week of the school year is the last week before Christmas break. It is chaotic, but it’s the perfect time for gingerbread classroom activities!
Using gingerbread theme activities in your classroom is going to be so fun for your students. They LOVE the story The Gingerbread Man! This is also good for your students who do not celebrate holidays, as you can do these gingerbread man craft activities without mentioning Christmas. (I always checked with their parents first).
Begin With Gingerbread Man Books Read Aloud!
I read one gingerbread man book read aloud every day this week. Here is a list of my favorite gingerbread books to read. These are also great for compare and contrast activities!
Gingerbread Classroom Activities
Have you ever had your gingerbread man “run away” from your classroom? It seriously is the best day! Here’s how to set it up.
Begin with this gingerbread man craft activity. Using a cut-out, have your students make a gingerbread man out of paper and decorate it how they’d like. I show them how to take a yellow or a white crayon and add icing. I’ll even let them use glitter for buttons. If you have yarn, it makes great bows for either a gingerbread boy or girl. But the trick is to get your students talking about how they’re decorating their gingerbread friends. (More on that in a min.)
I always tell my students that we’re going to lay our gingerbread men out on the counter to dry. This is why the glitter comes in handy, tell your students you don’t want it all over!
Choosing Which Gingerbread Man Runs Away
After they leave for the day, choose ONE gingerbread man that you want to run away. A word on your selection: make sure it’s from a student who is going to enjoy this. If you have a student who tends to show anxiety or doesn’t like change, don’t select their gingerbread man. You’re going to want to make this fun and not traumatic.
Remember how you had them describe their decorations in detail? Consider a student who knows EXACTLY what their gingerbread man looks like. That way when you’re searching for him and making missing posters, your students will know what to look for.
Gingerbread Classroom Activities
Everything you need for gingerbread classroom activities is included here! Get read alouds, missing posters, and more!
Find a place for the gingerbread man to “hide”. I’ve chosen different places every year, and it’s hilarious. I’ve had him talking about his feelings with the social worker, in trouble in the principal’s office, and in the library reading more Christmas read aloud stories! Having the whole staff involved makes this more fun!
As soon as I can in the morning, I call my students up a few at a time to hang up our gingerbread men. I always begin with the student who I’ve selected in the first group. They’ll be trying to find their gingerbread man in the sea of crafts, and start coming up to you to tell you that they can’t find their gingerbread man.
And The Emmy Goes To…
This is when your Emmy Award winning performance will begin. Say, “I’m sure it’s still there, keep looking.” As you go, you can get more students to help. “Can you help her find her gingerbread man?”
When you’re finished hanging up the rest of the crafts, they’ll realize that one is missing. I’ve never had a year where one student doesn’t blurt out that it probably ran away. If not, you can lead them to this conclusion.
Ask your students, “What should we do?” You can also suggest that they call the principal, email the staff, and make missing posters. (Again, why it’s important to know what the gingerbread man looks like).
You can make your own posters, or I have missing posters ready for you in the gingerbread classroom activities set.
Since my coworkers knew I did this every year, they loved playing along. Sometimes, I’d take my students around the building to tape up our missing posters, and I’d have my teaching BFF next door go in and trash my room a little bit. Once we came back to our room and found cookies and books scattered around everywhere!
Time for the reveal! Usually after lunch, or when you find your students are getting antsy, you can suggest another search of the school and lead them to the gingerbread man’s hiding spot. Get your camera ready, they’re so excited when they find him!
More Gingerbread Classroom Activities
Afterward, your students can have a treat of gingerbread cookies and write about their experiences. I also add our missing gingerbread friend to the bulletin board with speech bubbles to retell the story The Gingerbread Man.
This is a perfect time to use more gingerbread man printable activities like the ones you see here. You can grab everything you need for your gingerbread man theme activities here!
This really is one of my favorite classroom activities, and I hope that you love it too!
2 Responses
I love this idea because it includes everyone! I would like more non holiday activities like this for other times of the year. Thank you!
Hi Kim! Thank you so much! We agree completely, it’s so important to make sure activities are inclusive. We released a whole product line of writing activities for the year, with seasonal, non-holiday themes, as well as science and social studies topics as well. They are on our website, LiteracyStations.com. We’d love to know your thoughts!