Gingerbread Week with a Freebie!

Gingerbread Week!!  It's always such a fun week! Or maybe you don't have a whole week, but just a few days, or maybe just a whole day dedicated to Gingerbread!

These are some of my favorite books - You can download the PDF which has clickable links for the books HERE or you can just search on Amazon HERE. 

Some of my favorite activities to do throughout the week....

Of course, a craft. This one though, we START the week with it because we use it to do our LOST writing. I do a non-tracer version, and they all come out so different, and I LOVE them. I got this ideas YEARS ago...I don't remember from who though. I think Deanna Jump, though? 

They they use their craft for their writing. They plan out a description, with my guidance of what I want. And honestly, it just depends on the skills we've learned if we're doing compound sentences, listing a series, certain words/grammar skills, etc. 

But afterwards, I hang up all the gingerbread people and I read the writings out loud to see if we can find the matches. 

And of course - we HAVE to eat. I love adding food whenever I can! 

These are what we usually do, but you can do whatever you like!

Some other activities I incorporate are ornament making - My husband actually owns a laser business, so he cut out a cookie cutter shaped like the Tough Cookie, and we made our ornaments from them. They're SO CUTE. 

I also love doing these selfie Google Slide Writings. 

And I will always be using my OLD Scholastic News articles...until they come out with a new one. 

Check out a lot of the activities we do in my Gingerbread Mini-Unit on TpT!

OH... and another thing I love doing (I usually put it in the writing center for the week) is the Gingerbread Man Preposition Book. I have a few of these for throughout the year. You don't HAVE to make it a preposition book, but that's what I always do to review prepositions.  Grab it for free HERE.  

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Week Before Winter Break

Life is always crazy the week before break.... performances, shortened days, creating holiday crafts, and other things that get added to the calendar... it's always crazy. I know some dread this week, but I really look forward to it! I've figured out what helps us get through them... THEME days!

We usually have 3 or 4 days the last week (we typically get out the 21 or 22, right around there)... here are some things we do.

Grinch Day!

We read the book and then talk about Author's Message. We do a craft where they draw what represents the author's message. 

Then we do a directed drawing (found HERE) and we add in a lesson on similes (which we've done previously with Gingerbread week)

We also do some Grinchy math problems, but I forgot to take a picture of those.

And we end the day with the Grinch movie and Grinchy treats!

Mistletoe Madness!

On Tuesday, we had our Mistletoe Madness, where it was craft mania!! We were really crunched for time, so it was a little hectic, but I LOVE all the crafts!

Their stocking ornament where they sew it up... they use plastic needles and you'd be surprised what a skill this is for them!

Snowmen Socks.... 

This is definitely a 2-person job, so I kept coming back to help out with this station.

But they turn out SO cute!

Measure a Tree - I use scrapbook paper and let them use Q-tips to make the snow on the paper and add a dash of glitter.

You can see past Mistletoe Madness Days HERE and HERE. 

Reindeer Games!!

Another name for this would be Winter Minute to Win It, and you can see last year's post HERE. After a few years, I have finally gotten this down to a pretty good organized chaos. What helps is that I have all the stations labeled with my photo frames that I have numbered.

This year I had 6 stations....

Candy Cane Pick Up

Snow Nose

Roll an Ornament 

Gingerbread Man Shuffle 

Rudolph Nose 

(we traded out the popcicle sticks each round - you can just slip the sticks in and out of the loop-tie on the end of the stick)

Jingle Toss 

They have so much fun with these games. You can download some directions HERE.

We've also done years where we've done a "Storybook Sleigh Ride" where each teacher in our pod has a book to read and a craft to go with it...

I always do Santa's Stuck. 

With a cute little craft

This year, we have a 4th days, so we're going to do a Brunch - where all the kids bring in food to share and then we'll have Movie day after lunch. 

And we always do a Sock Exchange...it's so fun!!

They wear their new socks 

Happy Winter Break, my friends!!

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Christmas Number Sense Tree

One of my teammates made the comment the other day, "You have one of these things for all the holidays!" lol  I guess I do... I think it all started with the tree though. 

To give the students their numbers, I walk around with a deck of cards and pass out 2 cards and they have to make the greatest number....

Here's what we did for the 2nd grade version...

Here's the example from 1st grade...

I did some for the fall too - 

Here is the 2nd grade version of the Pumpkin shape example....

and the 2nd grade version of the turkey....

and what we did for the 1st grade turkeys...

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