8 Yummy Gingerbread Learning Activities

Isn’t the month of December a fun time to learn? The range of themes to choose from this time of year is numerous! You could focus on cultures with a “Christmas around the World,” theme or select a broad theme like “Winter”. I like to narrow down my theme each week. The themes I have planned for December are Christmas Trees, Snow, Gingerbread, The Nativity, and we have a Polar Express Day coming up soon.

This week’s theme is Gingerbread, so I thought I would share a few activities that we have been doing this week.

Gingerbread Activities:

1. Read Books

There are so many fun Gingerbread themed books out there, it’s impossible to read them all in a week (unless that’s all you did!). It would be fun trying, but there are so many fun activities you can do with the books that it’s good to take a break from reading occasionally. Our first book to read was The Gingerbread Man, by Karen Schmidt. 

2. Life-size Gingerbread Man Decorating
After reading the book, we used our vocabulary to describe what the gingerbread man looked like. Then, we took turns lying down on the patio to get traced with outside chalk, which made a life-sized gingerbread man. Then, we used the chalk to decorate our giant gingerbread man and girls. 

3. How Many Gingerbread Men Tall are You?
I have foam gingerbread men that I got from a dollar store a couple of years ago. We used them as our measuring units to see how tall we were. First, Caleb laid down and Lily Anne placed the foam shapes from his feet to his head. He was 7 gingerbread men tall.  Then, we measured Lily Anne. She was 5 gingerbread men tall. We talked about how Caleb was taller and that meant it took more gingerbread men to measure him. We looked at the two measurement columns of gingerbread men we created to see that some of Lily’s matched up to Caleb’s, but Caleb had 2 extra or 2 more gingerbread men than Lily did. 

4. How Tall and How Wide is Your Gingerbread Man?
After measuring ourselves with gingerbread men, it was time to measure the foam cookies themselves. I provided pennies, small paperclips, large paperclips, and square plastic jewels that they used to measure the height of the gingerbread man. Then, we used those same items to measure the width of the gingerbread man. We talked about the following math vocabulary words: height, tall, width, wide, measure. We also compared the outcomes of our measurements using each material and talked about why the outcomes were different. 

5. Roll and Splat Gingerbread Man Numbers
Next, we rolled giant dice and counted the number of dots on the dice. Then, the kids splatted BINGO dabbers on those numbers. This was a fast and fun activity!

6. Play Dough Gingerbread Man Decorating
We decorated gingerbread men several different ways today. During our sensory time, we decorated play dough gingerbread men. The kids used cookie cutters to cut their gingerbread man out of brown dough. Then, they used beads, wiggle eyes, plastic jewels, cut pieces of sparkly pipe cleaner and other items to decorate and redecorate!

7. Foam Gingerbread Man Decorating
We also decorated those foam gingerbread men that we used to measure earlier in the day. I provided the children with a variety of materials and let their creativity go crazy. It was a good time to practice our gluing skills too.

8. Gingerbread Journaling
The last gingerbread man decorating activity we did was when they transferred how they decorated their foam gingerbread man to their journal. Even though I tried to encourage them to draw what they saw, (For example, if the gingerbread man had red buttons, the child should draw red circles on his gingerbread man) I didn’t want to stifle their creativity and I’m glad I didn’t. Caleb surprised me by drawing a picnic basket in the gingerbread man’s hand. We talked about how the gingerbread man was going on a picnic and what he was going to bring. Would it surprise you to know gingerbread men bring cookies on their picnic?  After finishing his drawing, he decided he wanted to write the words “picnic basket” on his paper. We said the words together and determined that there were two words, so I drew 2 lines. Hind-sight 20/20, I should have drawn the lines longer. He stills writes his letters very large, but we squished them in. He impressed me with his letter knowledge. I helped sound out the words and he listened and wrote the sounds he heard. 

I found several of these activities and more on Pinterest. You can find more Gingerbread themed learning activities by visiting and following my Gingerbread Board!

Are you having fun with a gingerbread theme? Feel free to share what you do with others in the comments below or find me on Facebook or Twitter! I always love to hear from my readers!

God Bless You on Your Learning Journey ~

You can find me at these great Link Ups!

A Bright Idea Countdown Christmas Advent Calendar

I’m late sharing this… but I didn’t get it up until last minute myself. We don’t usually do Advent Calendars, but this year I wanted to try it. We’re actually doing two. One is a scripture based reading that a friend shared with me. You can find more information about it by CLICKING HERE. The second is the fun Countdown Advent that I made and we put up together.

Each day we count down the days by turning a Christmas light number around and then my children receive a book with a Christmas or winter related topic that we read together.

The first thing I did was pull out of my stash 25 books to wrap. I wrapped books about snowmen, gingerbread men, Christmas trees, Christmas morning, and Santa Claus, but the most important books are those about Jesus, the reason for the season. I kept a permanent marker close by as I wrapped so I could write the title of each book on the outside of the wrapping paper. This time of year, themes pop up in our weekly learning. For example, our theme this week was about Christmas trees, next week is snowmen, the following week is gingerbread men, and the week of Christmas is the birth of Jesus. With that in mind, I ordered my books so that my children would open a book that related to our theme for the week and stacked them so I could just grab the top book to give them each day. After wrapping all these books, you could create a decorative piece like the Christmas tree shaped stack found HERE, but I just stuck mine in a cabinet. If I left them out, I knew they wouldn’t stay wrapped very long. All it would take is a trip to the bathroom for me and they’d have wrapping paper under their fingers!

Countdown Christmas Advent Calendar

Directions

1. Cut out 25 Christmas tree lights from foam shapes. Mine are about 2.5” L X 1.5” W. Once I cut the first light, I used it as my pattern for the 24 others. I used foam from my scrap pile so I wasn’t able to do a pattern with the colors, but could be an option for you.

2. Write one number on each Christmas light from 1 – 25 as large as you can using a permanent marker.

3. Make a hole at the top of each Christmas light.

4. Lay all the lights out in order on the ground and measure how long your ribbon needs to be. Add about 2” extra of ribbon on each side. Also, make sure your Countdown Advent Calendar will fit in the location you had picked out. I didn’t have an area large enough to fit our Countdown Advent Calendar, so I made two rows by cutting my ribbon in half.

5. Fold each end of your ribbon in about ½” and using your scissors cut a tiny slit. This will allow you to slide the ribbon onto the hook for hanging. Since I had two ribbons, I had to cut four slits. If you’re going to hang the ribbon as one piece, after cutting one slit on each end, I would fold the ribbon in half and cut a third slit so there is not too much slack in the ribbon once you put all the lights on.

6. I used 3M hooks to hang our ribbon. I slid the ribbon onto the hooks, stuck one side to the wall, eye-balled the ribbon to be level, and stuck the other hook to the wall. Since I had a second row, I put a paper clip onto the middle of the first ribbon and place a Christmas light on the clip to give me an idea of how low it would hang and where I should place the second ribbon. Then, I repeated the process to hang the second ribbon below the light.

7. I didn’t have enough paper clips of one color, so I decided to create a pattern. I had my children sort the three colors I chose to use. Then, I asked them to hand me a certain color paper clip to hang on the ribbons. Once we got started, they told me what color went next. I made sure to slide the paperclips on the ribbon the same way each time. For example, I slide the small side of the paper clip to the back of the ribbon and the open side of the paper clip was on the right side. It looks neater this way and it made it easier on the kids when they placed the lights on the clips to keep them all facing one direction. Older children could slide the paper clips onto the ribbon themselves.

 
8. Next, I placed all the lights number side up. My children took turns finding the numbers and placing them on the paper clips. All I did was pull the open end of the large side away from the paper clip a little bit so it was easier for them to slide the hole of the light down onto the paper clip. If the kids put the lights on with the number side going on first, the numbers all faced forwards. When a day has passed, the kids take a number off and flip it over so that the blank side goes on first and the number faces the wall.

9. Last we open our book and read it together. It’s fun activity that gets us in the spirit of the holiday! I hope you enjoy it too!

Do you use an Advent Calendar? DIY or bought? Feel free to share what you do with others in the comments below or find me on Facebook or Twitter! I always love to hear from my readers!

God Bless You on Your Learning Journey ~

You can find me at these great Link Ups!

 

Our Unique and Simplistic Christmas Decor...the RV Way

There is one thing you need for Christmas decorating that a camper is limited on…

1. SPACE!

You need storage space if you’re going to be traveling around with decorations.  Where are you going to keep ornaments, a tree, stockings, blow ups, nativities, and more? You need an area to put up your tree, stockings, and other decorations. 

This is our third Christmas celebrated in our camper and our first in our upgraded camper. Even though we have more room, our living space is precious to us. Putting up a traditional tree inside the camper is out of the question. There’s no place we could put it that it wouldn’t be in front of or blocking something. We can’t rearrange the furniture like your house furnishings, so we decided to continue the tradition of putting up our Christmas tree outside in front of our camper. I like this placement better than putting it up inside anyway because now others can enjoy our decorations too. 

Setting up a tree outside, isn’t for everyone. We’re in south Florida where the temperature has been in the 70s – 80s on Christmas. People celebrating Christmas with a three foot deep blanket of snow surrounding their camper probably don’t want to spend time setting up and decorating a tree outside, much less open Christmas presents outside. There are people that choose to put a Christmas tree inside. Some have pop up trees, but I believe most have small trees that usually go on the dining table.

We buy a once-alive tree so we don’t have store a fake tree for the rest of the year. This year, we have an extra outdoor plug close to the front of the camper so we were able to light up the tree including our star topper. I love it! We haven’t done that in the past. All the ornaments I purchase (or make with the kids) are weather-proof and not fragile. I want my little ones to be involved in the decorating process and they like to decorate and redecorate many times before Christmas comes. Like I said before, we are loving the outdoor speakers. It was nice to sing along with beautiful Christmas songs while decorating our tree together. It’s a great way to get you in the Christmas spirit.

Our Christmas tree is our main decoration outside, but we also have a small post that we hang seasonal flags on and a wreath on our door made from once-alive tree branches. Our first year, I bought giant clear plastic snowflakes that I hung from our awning with S hooks along with our large ball lights. I wish I had a picture of it, because it really was a pretty site, but it didn’t last long. Being in Florida, we can have very windy days. While you can tie down your awning, we’ve never felt comfortable doing that. We’ve seen way too many awnings break with a big enough wind gust, so we only put our awning out when there is little to no wind and put it up when wind speeds pick up. Thankfully, with our new camper putting the awning in is as simple as pressing a button! Since our awning is constantly being rolled out and in, adding decorations that you have to remove all the time isn’t for us. We talked about getting one of those blow ups of the RV where the door opens and a penguin pops out, but I chose not to for two reasons.

1. Our kids would think they are the blow ups that they get to jump on at those indoor playground areas and it would be a constant battle to keep them away from it. It’s hard enough to keep them out of other people’s yards and away from their decorations. They just get so excited and want to touch, touch, touch!

2. SPACE. I know they don’t take a lot of room, but it does take some and there are other things I’d like to save my space for. (like more books! Yes! I am a children’s book addict. I should attend Children’s Book Addict Anonymous!)

Inside, we used 3M hooks to hang our stockings on the wall. I also use 3M stickers to hang our artwork on the walks. Keep checking back to see more examples of our holiday themed learning and crafts! The only other thing I plan to add is a nativity set. In the past, I’ve had beautiful porcelain scenes, but I’m into making my life easier and adding breakable things my kids aren’t allowed to touch just doesn’t work for me. Don’t worry though, they get plenty of practice “Not Touching” other things, but we have enough of those. No reason to add any more. That said, I still want a nativity, so I’m looking at getting the Melissa& Doug wooden nativity for their room. I don’t mind if they play with it. In fact, if they do, it gives me a great opportunity to retell the story of Jesus’ birth, the reason for the season.

We’ve been fortunate to have good weather on Christmas day the last two years, so we’re hoping our streak continues. In the past, Santa has delivered our gifts right to our tree outside where we crank up the Christmas tunes while we begin the paper ripping process. If we have bad weather that makes this scenario impossible this year or in the future, Santa knows where the extra key is hidden so he can deliver the gifts inside. (wink, wink)

Remember, whether you’re in a house, apartment, or camper, there’s only one right way to decorate your home.

http://rvclassroom.blogspot.com/2015/11/our-unique-and-simplistic-christmas.html

Have you been in the decorating spirit? I'd love to hear how you decorate your camper. Feel free to share your comments here below or find me on Facebook at The Learning Wagon!

God Bless You on Your Learning Journey ~

You can find me at these great Link Ups!