Gingerbread Activities and Centers

I LOVE Christmas!  It's my most favorite time of the year.  I Love everything about it...hot chocolate, the lights, my Christmas tree lit up in the dark, Christmas movies, Christmas music, and everything else.  Especially the REAL reason we celebrate Christmas!  So, with that said, it's beginning to look and feel a lot like Christmas in our classroom as well.  This week we have been doing gingerbread activities and learning about our five senses.  I won't list everything we've done because we've been busy little kinderelves, but I will post pictures of some of the things we've been doing.  This week has been a blast!  Our tree is up, there are a few ornaments on it with more to come, and the Christmas music is on....ALL the time. 

*New!  I've just uploaded my gingerbread unit to my tpt store HERE!  Check it out!  It includes tons of literacy and math center ideas.  (2011)

Here the kids are spinning a candy spinner and graphing what they spin.  They play until one column reaches the top.  This determines the winning candy.  Last they count each column and record the number.

This math center is a roll and cover game.  They roll the cubes, count the dots, and cover that number.

A friend of mine told me about these kind of Math Their Way games.

She counted and realized she already had four covered.

In this game, the kids have to roll two dice, count the dots, and write the number.

This game requires counting, recognizing numbers/number words, and color words.  

For writing center this week, they had to catch the gingerbread men around the room and record the word to match the picture on their sheet.

We charted our five senses then made our own mini-sized 5 senses gingerbread men.

The cotton is sprayed with a body splash.  I adapted this idea from a Mrs. Estes.

They had to "catch" gingerbread men here and find the matching letter and dot it with a bingo dotter.

For fellow teachers who may be reading this...after paper-clipping all of those ginger people last year and the clips falling off after every "catch", I had the idea of just stapling a staple in each one.  It worked just as well and so much easier than paper clips.  

Our first ornaments for this year...beaded candy canes.

Here we are painting our gingerbread men glyphs.

This was probably our most favorite literacy center.  They pulled an object (from our Lakeshore sound tubs) out of Santa's hat and graphed it on their paper.  Which one will win...D or K?  So much fun!

Stamping rhyming words

making gingerbread men ornaments

This is our countdown to Christmas activity.  Parents, help your child remember to cover one number each night and they can countdown to see how many more days until Christmas.

The kids loved this.  They had to measure the gingerbread man first with peppermints then they had to compare their own height to the gingerbread man.  Are they taller or shorter?  I think we actually had on little one that was shorter than him.