My Favorite Gingerbread Activities for Preschool
I’m so excited to share my favorite gingerbread activities for preschool learners with you and your students! Gingerbread cookies make an excellent preschool theme for the winter season. I’ve got lots of fun gingerbread crafts, printables, and ideas for a gingerbread unit your little learners are going to love!
Did you know gingerbread has been around since the 16th century? It’s true! There are many fun stories and legends about gingerbread cookies to explore with your preschoolers including the classic gingerbread man tale.
In fact, you can use gingerbread activities for preschool to build fine motor skills, teach math concepts, develop literacy, explore geography, and a whole lot more. Keep reading to discover all the fun you can have with a gingerbread unit or theme in your preschool classroom or at home with your little learners this year.
Gingerbread Activities for a Preschool Gingerbread Unit
A gingerbread unit study would be so much fun during the holiday season! This winter, why not teach your preschoolers about letters and numbers with gingerbread friends?
Preschool teachers can explore every subject area with a fun gingerbread week in the classroom. Check out my favorite gingerbread themed lesson plans and ideas below.
Reading
Reading aloud to preschoolers is the very best way to help them develop print awareness, increase vocabulary, and fall in love with reading at an early age. Fortunately, there are tons of different versions of the gingerbread man story for you to explore. Check out some of my favorite gingerbread books below.
The Gingerbread Man by Gail Yerrill
The Gingerbread Pirates by Kristin Kladstrup
Gingerbread Christmas by Jan Brett
The Gingerbread Girl by Lisa Ernst
How to Catch a Gingerbread Man by Adam Wallace
Then, practice early reading skills with my printable Gingerbread Cookie Emergent Reader. Each page contains colorful pictures and simple sentences to help your early readers practice and build fluency.
It’s part of my Disguise a Gingerbread activity for preschool learners. This bundle is filled with fun ideas including a writing prompt that will encourage your preschoolers to practice their handwriting and develop creative writing skills at the same time.
You can use gingerbread cookies to have syllable learning fun too!
Use my printable Gingerbread Syllable Activity to pair each gingerbread cookie with their own gingerbread house.
It’s the perfect activity for a small group, circle time, or use it as part of your literacy center during the Christmas season.
Math and Writing
You can use gingerbread cookies to teach all kinds of fun math skills to preschool students. Count gingerbread cookies at snack time or use them to complete simple addition and subtraction problems.
Gingerbread cookies are perfect for sequencing too. My printable Gingerbread Sequence Activity will help your preschoolers master using words like “first, second, and last” while helping them to arrange items and tasks in the proper order. Plus, the gingerbread cookie theme is tons of fun for little learners!
Then practice counting to 10 with this free gingerbread counting activity for kids. Simply grab my mats, identify the numbers on each one, and place that many gingerbread cookies on top.
Don’t want to use food? No worries! Here are a few other ways you can use this same free printable in your classroom this Christmas:
Another fun gingerbread counting activity would be to play “roll a gingerbread boy or girl” with your students. Simply draw a gingerbread outline on brown construction paper. Then, give each student a die to roll.
Students will roll the dice and draw the corresponding gingerbread embellishment on their cookie outline. Alternatively, you could practice fine motor skills and pasting by giving students embellishments like buttons, glitter, and glue to decorate their gingerbread cookies with each dice roll. When you’re finished with this gingerbread people activity, every student will have adorable gingerbread man crafts to take home and enjoy over the holidays!
Science
Science is a big part of STEM and there are plenty of cool gingerbread activities for preschool learners that incorporate science too. My favorite is a printable Gingerbread Cookie Science Experiment. You can do this science experiment right in the classroom with very little prep time.
In this science experiment, students will dissolve gingerbread cookies in water, soda, or vinegar and discover which solution works best. Will the cookies melt more quickly in soda than in vinegar? Preschoolers can practice making observations, and predictions, and recording their results with this fun Christmas science experiment.
My printable Gingerbread Science Experiment comes with differentiated no-prep printables to help your students practice the scientific method in a way that’s fun and inclusive for everyone. They’ll remember this adorable gingerbread man experiment all winter long!
I love the idea of adding STEM skills and activities to every lesson I plan. It’s critical for our students to begin honing these important skills from an early age. There are lots of fun gingerbread activities for preschool that can help your kids develop STEM skills too.
Check out the Gingerbread Man Problem Solving STEM Kit from Lakeshore Learning. It’s filled with fun gingerbread themed ideas for preschoolers! Kids will get to help the gingerbread man cross the river by creating a plan and testing solutions.
The kit comes with all the tools your students will need, a helpful guide, and even teacher cards with lesson plans to make this activity easy to incorporate during the holiday season.
History & Geography
Gingerbread is synonymous with holiday baking. Edible gingerbread houses, gingerbread baby cookies, and spice cakes have been familiar desserts since the 15th century. With such a long history, it’s easy to think of gingerbread activities for preschool learners that help teach geography and history.
You could use a world map and have students find the different countries associated with gingerbread. Places like China, Germany, England, France, and Holland all have a rich history with gingerbread cookies and breads. It’s a great way to tie in holidays around the world too!
Another fun idea is to have your students create and mail their own gingerbread boys and girls to friends and relatives. Similar to the popular Flat Stanley project, create laminated gingerbread characters and have students mail them off.
Then, write about all the fun places your own Gingerbread boy has “run away” to this Christmas season!
More Hands On Gingerbread Activities for Kids
At this time of year, it’s a fun idea to make gingerbread scented play dough. Create your own gingerbread boys and girls with a rolling pin, a small cookie sheet, and a gingerbread man cookie cutter.
This sensory activity will help your preschoolers develop strong fine motor skills while incorporating their sense of sight, smell, and touch. Keep these items in a plastic container with a lid and you’ll have a fun holiday sensory bin that will last all winter long!
I love the idea of adding STEM skills and activities to every lesson I plan. It’s critical for our students to begin honing these important skills from an early age. There are lots of fun gingerbread activities for preschool that can help your kids develop STEM skills too.
Check out the Gingerbread Man Problem Solving STEM Kit from Lakeshore Learning. It’s filled with fun gingerbread themed ideas for preschoolers! Kids will get to help the gingerbread man cross the river by creating a plan and testing solutions.
The kit comes with all the tools your students will need, a helpful guide, and even teacher cards with lesson plans to make this activity easy to incorporate during the holiday season.
Do you have more favorite gingerbread activities for preschool students that I didn’t mention? Share your favorite gingerbread theme activities and lesson plans in the comment section. I can’t wait to read about all the fun activities you’re enjoying with your own gingerbread lesson plans this winter!
