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Printable Gingerbread words for your thematic word wall

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Fingerplay

**See words below**

Fingerplay

**See words below**

Do You Know The Gingerbread Man?

(Tune: the Muffin Man)

Do you know the Gingerbread Man,

Gingerbread Man, Gingerbread Man?

Do you know the Gingerbread Man,

Who ran and ran and ran?

He said, "Catch me if you can,

If you can, if you can."

He said, "Catch me if you can!"

Then ran and ran and ran.

Xerox the shape of a gingerbread man onto brown construction paper.  Have each child cut out their gingerbread man with scissors.  Next, add food coloring to several Elmer's glue bottles.  Blue, green, and red will show up best on the brown paper, you will need to add several drops to each bottle to get the color dark enough.  Stir the food coloring into the glue bottle using a popsicle stick.  Have each student select a colored glue bottle and decorate his or her gingerbread man using the colored glue as if it were frosting; eyes, nose, mouth, buttons, decoration etc.  Add wiggly eyes and leave out to dry overnight.  These projects look great on a bulletin board or hallway display. 

Each day read a different gingerbread story.  Explain to the children that each book you read will be slightly different and their job is to notice those differences with their eyes and ears.  Xerox the front cover of each book that you read to your class and shrink it down to fit on the top of the graph.  Cut each cover copy out and glue at the top of the graph.  On the final day of your unit ask each child to come to the graph and write their name under their favorite gingerbread story.  (HINT: make sure your graph is long enough to accommodate all the signatures under the Gingerbread Baby because this is always everybody's favorite hands down!)

Take a sheet of butcher paper and draw a line down the middle vertically.  At the top of one column draw a gingerbread man with a happy face.  At the top of the other column draw a gingerbread man with a sad face.  Give each child one Little Debbie gingerbread man cookie and ask him to write his name in the appropriate column to graph if he liked the cookie or not.  Happy face indicates that they like the cookie and sad face indicates that they did not.  When finished with the graph display it for the whole group and discuss how many children liked the cookie and how many did not.  Use math language such as "more people liked the gingerbread cookie than did not",  "How many more people liked the cookie than those who didn't?", "Which column has less?" etc.

First, spread frosting on bottom and sides of milk carton.  Place milk carton on the meat tray and the frosting on the bottom will help hold it in place.   Next, add frosting to the "roof" and place two graham crackers to the top.   Last, mix food coloring of your choice into remaining white frosting to make another color and spread on top of the roof.  Now the children can use the frosting to glue candies on their gingerbread house.  Sprinkle the finished product with coconut flakes to resemble snow.

Fairy tales are perfect stories for teaching the story sequence of beginning, middle, and end.  For four year-olds I find it is best to stick with only three part sequences, any more than that and it becomes a real problem for them.  If you do not have access to any worksheets with sequence pictures for this story you can make your own using tracing paper placed over the pictures in the book, trace the picture, then copy on the Xerox machine.  The sequence that works best for this story is: 1) old lady baking cookies, 2) gingerbread man running away, and 3) fox eating gingerbread man.  Have the children color, cut, then glue the pictures in order of how they occurred in the story onto a brown strip of construction paper.   These are good assessments to keep in a portfolio to show understanding of sequence and ability to follow oral directions. 

Copy a large outline of a gingerbread man onto cardstock or construction paper.  Attach a letter explaining the concept of a "Family Project" to your student's families.  They may use materials commonly found at home such as cereal, corn, rice, etc...  You can even give awards for the most creative gingerbread man, or the yummiest :) These look fantastic displayed on a bulletin board.