| December Ideas |
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| Cooperative Giant Gingerbread People |
| made by 6th Grade and Kindergarten |
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| A Gingerbread Poem What do you feel? The cookie dough. It's smooth and soft to touch. Cool and squishy in my hands; I like it very much! What do you hear? The rolling pin. It's rolling out the dough. "Rrr-rrr" goes the rolling pin, A-rolling to and fro. What do you smell? A spicy scent. It's filling up the room. Sweet and strong, it smells so good, Much better than perfume. What do you see? A fresh baked treat. Its color is just right. What a lovely golden brown, A very pretty sight! What do you taste? The gingerbread! A spicy treat or two. Sweet and yummy in my mouth; Now I'll share some with you! |
| Where is My Gingerbread Man? (to the tune of "Oh Where Has My Little Dog Gone?") Oh where, oh where is my Gingerbread Man? Oh where, oh where can he be? He popped out of the oven and ran out the door. Oh where, oh where can he be? |
| I'm the Gingerbread Man (tune of "Skip to My Lou") Chorus: Run, run as fast as you can! Run, run as fast as you can! Run, run as fast as you can! You can't catch me, I'm the Gingerbread Man! I ran from the woman, yes I did. I ran from the woman, yes I did. I ran from the woman, yes I did. Cause I'm the Gingerbread Man! Chorus --continue song by replacing "woman" with man, cow, horse, sheep, dog, etc. I ran from everyone, yes I did. I ran from everyone, yes I did. I ran from everyone, yes I did. But I couldn't run from the fox... CHOMP! |
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| We love to measure and measuring with candy makes it even more fun. This math center allows the children to measure how many candy canes long, how many peppermints long, how many cubes long, etc their gingerbread man is. |
| We make our own cookies and they run away from the oven and we search for them. After we find them we make a graph about which part of the cookie we ate first and then we make an emergent reader about the parts of the gingerbread man. |
| Our December quilt squares are made with a TLC Santa and a 1" square patterned candy cane. |
| We make a laced stocking for our holiday party using old holiday cards and glitter glue. The kids make a class book about what things they would like to find in their stockings. |
| Reindeer are a favorite and we like to act out The Wild Christmas Reindeer by Jan Brett . We make and label a triangle reindeer, a hand print headband, reindeer food, and we do a survey graph about our favorite holiday symbols. (Santa, reindeer, candle, wreath, cornucopia, dreidle) |
| We have alot of literacy and math fun with this song. Each child gets a picture, a number word or a character name and we put the song together in the proper order as we sing it. Disney has a fun version on their Christmas CD that has animal noises and the kids have fun with it. Later it becomes a center that they put in order themselves. The 12 Days graphics can be found in Print Artist. We also make a count down Santa calendar that the kids fill in the numbers and add a cottonball each day until Christmas . You can make the numbering more challenging by having the kids write it in a red/green pattern. |
| Candy canes make great patterning activities. We make red/green/white patterned candy cane ornaments out of pipe cleaners and tricornered beads. Marble painted candy canes turn out just beautiful in holiday colors. Add a sprinkle of glitter to make them more festive. Don't forget the candy cane quilt square from up above. We also use the the fruit flavored candy canes and have a tasting party and log our opinions and what flavor we think we tasted on a data sheet. This makes for great dialogue between students. You can do a blind folded taste and have the kids work in partners to make it more challenging and cooperative if you like. We also make a class book by creating our own candy cane inventing a new flavor to go with it. We've had spaghetti and meatball flavored, pizza flavor, cotton candy... The #4 practice sheet was made using Print Artist for the kids to design 4 different 2 color patterns. |
| Using your senses at this time of year is easy to do. There are tons of holiday sights, sounds, textures, tastes and smells. I use candles and potpourri and spices and have the kids smell the object, log their opinion and guess what they think the smells are. You can't tell what the smell is from looking at the objects. Cover the words while the kids are smelling and then they can self check on how well they did. You can also make a touch box of holiday objects for the kids to guess with things like garland, jingle bells, ornaments, candy canes, bows, etc... |
| Using a square with a circle drawn in the middle have the kids cut on a diagonal from the corners to the circle's edge. Next have them fold one, leave one sticking the corner down with a yellow sticky dot to form this pinwheel pointsettia flower. The kids need to rub the dots well to keep them from popping up and you may want to give the flower a staple to make them permanently stick. They look beautiful in red, white and pink displayed around a door frame or as a bulliten board border. |
| Here are some holiday gifts from years past. The handprint snowman ornament, a holly leaf picture wreath, and a christmas card ornament. You can use old puzzle pieces spray painted green for holly leaves as well. |
| Here's a closer look at the snowman ornament. The paint is white acrylic with a touch of glue and the details were done with Sharpies. The poem that goes with it is: These aren't just five snowmen, as anyone can see. I made them with my hand, which is a part of me. Now each year when you trim the tree, you'll look back and recall. Christmas of 2004, when my hand was just this small. |