Traveling Gingerbread Friends

We have had a great (and early) start to school.  I have a new class of 18 excited 5-6 year olds that are ready to learn! We began the year reviewing colors and shapes.  We had a theme color for each day and ended the second week of school with RAINBOW DAY! There were plenty of tie-dye clothes and crazy color combinations. We also had an adventure with our friend the gingerbread man.  We read and retold his story using sequencing cards I purchased from the Kindergarten Lifestyle, you can find them here. We then brought the story to life by decorating our own gingerbread man (thanks to my talented teaching partner) using a variety of colors and, of course, RAINBOW sprinkles!

Our Gingerbread Man

We then took him to the lunchroom to be baked.  We have a great lunchroom manager (Ms. Glenda) who always begins our adventure with such enthusiasm.  We went to lunch and art. After art we returned to the lunchroom to see if he was finished baking. Well, what do you know, Ms. Glenda opened the oven and the gingerbread man was GONE! Thankfully that tricky little fellow had left a note as a clue to his whereabouts.  As it turned out, he had left notes leading us all around the school until we were led back to our classroom to find him and his final note.  It was quite the adventure!

Our gingerbread man and the final note. (Please ignore the end-of-the-day messy table!)

After we snacked on our gingerbread friend (because he invited us to enjoy), I introduced our very own gingerbread friends. You can find the template I used to create our friends by tpt seller Brenda Barron here http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/The-Gingerbread-Man-Shape-Book-and-Template-430452. Each student designed his/her very own gingerbread friend. Some added hair, hats, clothes, and buttons.

I plan to laminate these for more travel protection.

I also sent the Traveling Gingerbread Friend Project parent letter home to explain our idea.  You can find the parent letter and project here: Traveling Gingerbread Friend on my TpT.  We will mail our Ginger Friends to friends/family members around the state, U.S. and maybe even world as soon as I receive addresses from the students' parents.  The children are excited about their little Gingies and can't wait to receive envelopes and packages addressed to our classroom.  Our class will learn about different places and connect with people via their Gingerbread Friends.  We will extend this class project with presentations, writing enrichment activities, and maybe even a class book!

Please comment if you have any great enrichment activity ideas you would use to extend this project. Thank you!



Click here to see an update on our adventures!