Gingerbread is such a fun theme to explore during the winter time. Â There are so many fun books to share with the children and of course, there are the gingerbread cookies and gingerbread houses…
To kick off our Gingerbread unit, we read the story “The Gingerbread Loose in the School” by Laura Murray. This is a super fun book about a class that makes a Gingerbread man but then leaves it to cool while going out to play. The Gingerbread man thinks he has been left behind so he goes off in search of the children and runs into a few obstacles along the way…
After reading our story, the children went on a hunt for some paper Gingerbread men we had hidden around the classroom…
After collecting all the Gingerbread men from around the classroom, we set them all out to see how many we had found…
Then to get us stretching and moving and (and for a little listening practice too) we played “Gingerbread Man Says”….
After our big introduction to the Gingerbread man, the children were off to play in our Gingerbread centers. One center was this adorable gingerbread scene that Deborah and Hayden created from a paper box, a few pine boughs, some fake snow and some real gingerbread men cookies…
The houses were decorated with foam stickers on both sides to invite the children to play from all sides…
We left the tops of each gingerbread house open so that the children could reach in and out of the houses from all directions as desired. One of the favorite things to do was to make it snow inside the gingerbread houses…
The children were intrigued by role playing with real gingerbread cookies…
The children brought over blocks from the block center to add to their play…
A few of the children brought over cars too…
Several of our gingerbread men got broken along the way but the children found this to be an interesting part of their play. It seems that there was also a gingerbread man hospital with a doctor on call for all the broken legs and arms. Â And by the way, before we began, Deborah assured the children that they would get their very own gingerbread man to eat at snack time and the children easily understood that these were just for play…
By the end of the day we did have snow all over the classroom and even a few reports of fake snow in children’s hair when they got home from school which must mean that the children were truly immersed in their play!
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