Making gingerbread houses

I know this post is a few weeks late, but I left for the holiday break and forgot to email myself the pictures! Well at least you will have it for next year. 

For the end of our gingerbread unit, we made gingerbread houses. I LOVE this activity! To make the house you will need:
* small milk carton for each kiddo
* graham crackers
* glue gun
* frosting
* candies
* knife for each kiddo

I assembled all of the houses before I started the lesson. I find this is easiest when working with little ones. To start wash out the milk carton and let it dry. Then I glue the top closed using the hot glue gun. I don't know about you, but I love using my hot glue gun! It can do so much!!

After that step is finished, you move on the messy step! Break the graham crackers in half, glue one cracker onto each side of the milk carton. This will take 2 crackers per milk carton.

Next, break the graham crackers in quarters (you will end up with rectangles). Glue the rectangles on the top of the milk carton to create the roof.  I like a small overhang on my roof. Line up one side with the edge of the milk carton, the other side will overhang a bit and that is OK. 

The last step is to break smaller pieces to fit on the ends. There will be some overhang and that is OK. After the glue dries, I crumble the corners down. It won't be perfect, but it will get covered with frosting and candies so no worries!!

Now, on to the fun part! Decorate the house with frosting and yummy candies!! 

To send the houses home, I hot glued the houses to the plate and wrapped in a plastic bag. I attached a note that the houses were not edible! 

The Gingerbread Man

Run, Run as fast as you can! You can't catch me I'm the gingerbread man!

This is another of my favorite stories. My daughters and I still pretend to be the gingerbread man whenever we run (They are 5 and 3 so this is still fun. I might cry the day this stops being fun). I usually teach this story after Thanksgiving and before the Christmas unit. It is a good unit for between Thanksgiving and Christmas and I feel every child should know this story!

The vocabulary focus for this unit was verbs, verbs, verbs. I did have some nouns, but I really focused on the action words from the story. Here is my list:
old woman, old man, boy, gingerbread man, farmers, bear, wolf, fox, gingerbread house, cookie cutters, eat, bake, decorate, run, stir, roll, rest, and shout.

Here is the link to the vocab I used. It is on Google Drive. It does not have the characters, sorry.

Cookie cutter, bake, decorate and rest turned out to be the most difficult for my kiddos.

To kick of the unit, I hid the characters in pockets. Each kiddo pulled out a character and named it. Then we talked about (well tried to talk about) what story it could be. The gingerbread man kind of gave it away! Then we read the story and I set out the characters as they appeared in the story. I read the story twice this day. To make my puppets, I simply scanned the pages from the book. I really wanted the characters to look the same. I did use an old man and old woman from previous made set because there weren't any good pics in the book of the old man and old woman.

The next day the kiddos acted out the story! What fun! Everyone got a turn to be the gingerbread man and the fox. Now, in the version I read, the gingerbread man does not cross a river. 

The kiddos and I made gingerbread playdough. This is your basic playdough recipe with cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves added for scent and coloring. I'm sorry, I didn't measure just had fun shaking the ingredients in the bowl! The kiddos love to shake :) **Note you will  not need any food coloring for this recipe. 

The basic playdough recipe is 

1 cup flour                                        1 cup water
2 tsp. cream of tartar                         2 Tbsp. cooking oil
1/2 cup salt                                      food coloring
In heavy saucepan, mix dry ingredients.  Add water, oil and food coloring.  Cook 3 min. or until mixture pulls away from side of pan.  Knead slightly in hands when cool.  Put in a ziplock bag.

My favorite part of this lesson is of course making gingerbread man cookies!! This lesson I really focused on the verbs. Stir, roll, cut, bake, run away, decorate. In the morning we made the cookies. Then those naughty cookies ran away!! In each location the cookies left us a clue as to where to run next.
We used a bag recipe. Betty Crocker makes a good bag mix.
**Note: if you plan on rolling out the cookies to make gingerbread men, chill the dough for at least 20 minutes. It will roll so much nicer. Trust me. I always forget.

Here is an example of one of my clues:

Run, run as fast as you can you can't catch me I'm the gingerbread man! I ran to the teacher you see on Tuesdays and Thursdays. (this was their speech teacher.)

I had about 5 clues. We finally found the naughty cookies in the audiology room in the sound booth. I forgot to take pictures sorry!!

The next day we acted out the story again. Each kiddo pretending to be a different character. Then for the big grand finale, we went into another class and acted the story out for them! What fun. Again, I forgot to take pictures. Sorry, I was to busy being the narrator.

The characters in the version I read wear clothes and don't look anything like the real animals. So one day we sorted bears, wolves, foxes and cookies. I set out the character puppets and had  stack of pictures. Each kiddo took turns drawing a card and telling me what it was.
T: What is it?
S: It is a bear.

The language focus here was It.

Here is the link to the pictures I used. Let me know if there are any issues accessing the link. It is on Google Drive.

For our last big lesson we read "Gingerbread Baby" and focused on the house. All of my students wanted to call it a gingerbread man house! We really focused on just the gingerbread house. So of course we made gingerbread houses! In the next post, I will outline how we made these super easy, non-edible houses. I also remembered to take a ton of pictures!