Our Gingerbread Home

What a BUSY and short week we had!  Monday and Tuesday were snow days!  While I was excited for the days off, it made me wonder / worry how I was going to get some of my holiday stuff done!

Never fear!  My students worked so incredibly hard these three days of school we had!

My plan was to have my students make a gingerbread house bulletin board.  However, I didn’t just want them to make it and then that would be it.  I wanted them to show their work on it.

Our finished project!

Our gumball roof and part of the house

Part of the bottom of the house

The other part of the bottom of the house

Bottom middle of the house

I cut out the basic shape of the house (which was divided in half because on that wall, it’s the bulletin board, coat hooks, and then wall,).  Then during small groups, my students helped me paint the frosting.  This was actually a better activity then I ever thought it would be.  First of all, my students had to collaborate on this.  (How they were going to divide up the area, share the paint, etc…)  Second of all, a few of my students had no clue how to paint,  how to use the paint brush, how to turn it to make the lines look good….so it was truly a learning experience for all of them.

Next up we worked on our peppermints.  I had already put the lines on the paper plates.  My students and I talked about patterns, what they look like, and different kinds of patterns.  Then I let the students paint a pattern.  They really liked it! 

While the paint dried, we reviewed doubles facts.  We used the poem from First Grade Wow’sDouble Mint Math packet!  We also used 2 of Harry Kindergarten’s Doubles videos.  Doubles 1-5 and Doubles 6-10. (My kids LOVE those songs!)  Then I gave the students their peppermints.  They had to write doubles facts on there.  While they were writing their facts, I could hear them reciting the poem and singing the songs!  So cute!!!  Here are a couple of the peppermints:

Next up were our gingerbread people!  I got the template from a Holidays Around the World packet I bought on TPT.  We’ve been learning about adjectives in class.  So after coloring in the face and decorations, they wrote adjectives about themselves.  (They did all of this with crayon.)  Then we took brown water color paint and painted over it.  The kids LOVED how it made the crayons POP!

I love how this student made a frown but wrote they were nice! :-)

We’ve spent a lot of time learning about December holidays all over the world. (Courtesy of the packet I mentioned above.) Each of them got to pick a gumball and a country.  Then they had to write a fact that they remembered from that country.  I was pleasantly surprised (and happy) with some of the things my students remembered!

Finally, my students made mini gingerbread houses that we turned into fact family houses.  They got to pick the numbers they wanted to use for their fact family.  (Of course they were somewhat limited.  They could only pick numbers from 1-10.) 

Added this to the side of our gingerbread house so anyone passing by would know what we did!

After all was said and done, I put up their work and showed it to them.  Their faces lit up with excitement!  It truly was adorable!

Thanks for reading!

Enjoy your weekend!
Stacey