Inside Our Gingerbreadland Part 2

Well, we finished our last district benchmark test today and I am one weary teacher!
The whole taking computerized benchmark tests, in the computer lab, with 75 minutes
to get 25 second graders logged in, settled and answering 45 math questions about
wears me out! We made it through and I’m really proud of all of my kids and how far
they’ve come. My kids’ favorite part of our testing routine is getting to drink Smart water.
I give them a little bit in a tiny paper cup. Just enough to boost their confidence, but not
enough to need a bathroom break in the middle of the test! I didn’t realize how important
this little ritual was to them until I ran out! A few of my kids actually started to panic!
Luckily, while they were at recess I grabbed a couple of water bottles I had in the fridge
and poured them into an empty bottle from the day before. Whew! Crisis averted!

I know many of you are already out for the holidays, (5 more days for me!) but I
thought I would share the rest of our gingerbread escapades in case you’d like
some ideas for next year!

Today, we read The Matzah Man and discussed how in this version, unlike in The Gingerbread Man Loose in the School, the author’s word choices directly tell us the type of person this character is. We did a little twist on the inferring to identify character traits activity for Loose in the School and instead, found text evidence of the character’s behavior and statements to support the author’s descriptions. Students wrote character trait labels and then wrote their evidence underneath.

These are some of the literacy centers we’ve been working on the past couple of weeks.

One of my favorite writing center activities is to have my kids make a gingerbread man escape prevention manual! They think of four different plans for preventing his escape and I get such a giggle out of reading them!

“…Have Santa Claus come with his sleigh and swoop him up! Santa Claus will give him to you.”

So funny! It says, “My plan of not letting the gingerbread man go is to put him in a cage
and leave him until he gets old.” and “Make a trail of cupcakes all the way to
a cage to trap the gingerbread man.”

And of course, when all else fails….eat him!

One of the activities we did last week was a gingerbread jog. I placed reading riddles all around the classroom and students went on a scavenger hunt to find and solve the riddles.

These are some of the thinking maps we did with our unit. The kids make ceramic
gingerbread man spoon rests in Art hence the definition of a gingerbread man as a spoon rest!

These turned out so cute! After reading The Gingerbread Cowboy one of the things we did
was to make candy cane cactus ornaments!

If you’d like to see more of our gingerbread unit, you can view my Part 1 {Here}

You can find all of these activities and so much more in my Catch Me If You Can! unit

in my TeachersPayTeachers store.

This is another little activity we did in our literacy stations during our gingerbread unit.

We’ve been working with the syllables -tion and -ture and played

Capture the Cookie in Motion! After our lesson I gave the kiddos holiday themed

sticky notes and had them be on the lookout for words to add to our chart.

You can find this one too, in my TPT store.

Last week, we did this little writing activity. We’ve been talking a lot about kindness

and how people shine when they are kind.

I had the kids think of a time they felt good about their own acts of kindness and write them

inside these little Christmas lights.

This is one of my favorites from last year!

You can find this as well as a Secret Santa of Kind Words

class activity in my Christmas Kindness Kit

On Thursday this week we’ll have our annual Holiday Book Exchange! My kids are really looking forward to it! I send a note home to parents asking them to send in any unwanted books. We lay them all out and then pick names out of a basket to see which team gets to go first to choose their new book!