This week we read an focused our small groups on the adorable story Gingerbread Baby by Jan Brett.
Ms. Cally played “Listen & Color” and helped the preschoolers practice their listening skills. This is great prep for following directions and understanding classroom dynamic. So much of traditional schooling is based on auditory learning. Preschoolers need to practice being able to listen not only to directions, but for directions as well. We structure our classroom to give cues to call attention such as flashing the lights or clapping our hands. This helps create awareness for what is happening around us in the classroom. Ms. Cally instructed the preschoolers to ‘color the star orange’ or ‘find the spoon and color it purple’. This is a great activity to do at home with your little one!
Next with Ms. Lori we practiced our counting skills. Each child had a turn to roll the dice and count how many dots they had. Then we colored the spot on the gingerbread baby that had the matching number on it. This was a fun way to count, work on number recognition and strengthen fine motor muscles!
In Ms. Courtney’s group, the preschoolers practiced number recognition. On each gingerbread baby was a number. Their job was to count the right amount of pom poms to decorate the gingerbread baby. This is a great task for hand-eye coordination.
This was the first of our December Gingerbread Study. We are very excited to explore more stories!
We worked our fine motor muscles as well as our scissor skills as we created our
own gingerbread houses…
We completed our last gingerbread book today during group time, The Gingerbread Girl goes Animal Crackers. We decided to make our own gingerbread girl to gobble up! We added the ingredients, mixed and stirred, stirred and mixed, then formed the dough into the shape of a gingerbread girl! We knew from all of the stories we read that once we put her in the oven, WE COULD NOT PEEK or she might escape! We went outside for recess while she baked in the oven, but someone must have peeked because when we came inside, she was gone! The children searched the classroom and finally found her in the library! We used the rest of the gingerbread dough to make gingersnaps for snack time. They were delicious!
We continued our math study in small groups through the creation of a Gingerbread Graph. We took one big bite of a delicious gingergread cookie and recorded where we took our first bite on a class graph. We then compared each column by identifying which location had the most names and the least names. Looks like the leg was the winner!
Ingredients
What you do:
Mix the dry ingredients. Add spices a small amount at a time until the dough smells and looks like you want it too. Mix water and oil together first and then add them to the dry ingredients and stir. In a pot, cook the mixture for two to three minutes, stirring frequently. The dough will start to pull away from the sides of the pot and stick together. When this happens, take the playdough out of the pan and knead the dough until it becomes soft and smooth. Allow the dough to cool and then store it in an airtight container.
After reading the stories about all the different gingerbread friends throughout the month of December, it was time to try our hand at making our own. We measured and mixed the ingredients, stirred and stirred, rolled the dough then cut them out. We knew that the recipe said to cook them for a whole eight minutes, no more no less and NO PEEKING. We put them in the oven, but when we looked to see if they were done…our gingerbread friends were GONE! Our tray was empty. We quickly put our coats on and began searching outside incase they had slipped out while we weren’t looking. They were nowhere to be found! After searching high and low, we finally found them hiding in our classroom. Thank goodness the fox didn’t find them before we did!
After reading the stories about all the different gingerbread friends throughout the month of December, it was time to try our hand at making our own. We measured and mixed the ingredients, stirred and stirred, rolled the dough then cut them out. We knew that the recipe said to cook them for a whole eight minutes, no more no less and NO PEEKING. We put them in the oven, but when we looked to see if they were done…our gingerbread friends were GONE! Our tray was empty. We quickly put our coats on and began searching outside incase they had slipped out while we weren’t looking. They were nowhere to be found! After searching high and low, we finally found them hiding in our classroom. Thank goodness the fox didn’t find them before we did!
Creative Tots has specialized in the private education of both toddlers and preschool age children for over 15 years. We began in the heart of Madeira and now also have a new Mason location. We are specifically designed to focus on early childhood development for children ages 18 months to 5 years.
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