Preschool Corner ~ The Gingerbread Baby

This was a spur-of-the-moment unit that I put together last week and I had much more that I wanted to do…but time and Mommy feeling still a little under the weather ~ it didn’t all happen.

Many days Kaleb didn’t really want to do ‘school’, so he and I had a little deal going. If he finished four activites {including Advent devotions with me}, then he could play the holiday version of Angry Birds on my itouch for 10 minutes. Worked like a charm!

The Gingerbread Baby Unit

I’ll break up the things that we did by topic/subject. We read the book {over and over again} every day and did a few activities from the lapbook each day and also did 3-5 activities from our unit study.

Here’s a peek at the inside of our lapbook:

Language/Spelling/Pre-Reading

• Vocabulary {words from the book}:
• Uppercase/lowercase ABC matching {lapbook piece}
• Tell what happened in the story and favorite part of the story {lapbook piece ~ front of lapbook}
• Beginning sounds worksheets {lapbook piece}

doesn’t he look THRILLED to have his picture taken??

Math 

• Gingerbread Baby game ~ identifying numbers and moving correct number of spaces {lapbook piece}
• Patterning ~ we created different patterns using the gingerbread boy, girl and fox {lapbook piece}
• Size sequencing ~ we sequenced gingerbread babies from large to small and small to large {lapbook piece}
• Identifying numbers ~ we rolled a die and counted to build our gingerbread man puzzle {lapbook piece}

Science

• Animals ~ We printed off word card pictures of all the animals in the story and put them on a jump ring so we can add more animals from other stories that we read. We also sequenced the animals by the order we saw them in the book.
• Weather ~ we talked about the weather in the story {snowy and cold}, there was ice in the water that the gingerbread baby jumped onto
• Why didn’t the gingerbread boy jump in the water? Got this lovely idea from Cindy from Along the Way! We pulled out a tub of water and tried dunking him in the water to see what would happen {he fell apart}. We also tried a few different things: candy, pretzels, cereal, and more to see what would happen to them. The candy kept disappearing every time I turned around…not because it melted, but because a certain 4 year old kept pulling it out of the water and eating it {grins}.

Crafts

• Gingerbread baby craft using foam cut-outs that we picked up at the Dollar Tree

Fine & Gross Motor

• Write name ~ actually traced it to put on the front of our lapbook {lapbook piece}
• Trace the path that the gingerbread baby runs from the fox {lapbook piece}
• Practice writing the letter G {writing sheet in Preschool Pack}
• Trace color names {lapbook piece}

Click on the button below to download

the full Gingerbread Baby Preschool Pack.

Other things we wanted to do, but didn’t have time for {based on the book Gingerbread Baby by Jan Brett}:

• Actually make gingerbread cookies and a gingerbread house!! I caved and bought cookies from the grocery store because we didn’t have time.
• Make masks to go along with the story from Jan Brett’s site

Stories & Books We Used

Other Great Gingerbread Links:

• Cindy @ Along the Way ~ Her gingerbread unit along with a fun printable and great ideas
• Homeschool Share ~ Gingerbread Baby unit for older kids
• Jan Brett ~ coloring pages
• Jan Brett ~ board game
• Musings of Me ~ gingerbread printables

More Preschool Links:

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