The Barefoot Teacher: winter

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Gingerbread Man activities for kids, scented play dough gifts, crafts, & more for your Preschool, Kindergarten, or First Grade students. Perfect for your winter literacy or fairy tale unit on the gingerbread man, girl, boy, or baby!

The Gingerbread Man is one of my favorite units of the year! I'm going to give you a handful of gingerbread ideas today, including: three Gingerbread Man emergent readers that you can use with your kiddos, a recipe for some Gingerbread scented play dough, a video from my favorite YouTube channel for kids, & a couple of simple crafts.

**This post may contain affiliate links.**

Let's start with the emergent readers first. One of them covers the fairy tale story itself, one uses manipulative printouts to practice positional words, and one teaches students the directions left and right.

1) The Story of The Gingerbread Man

2) The Gingerbread Man Positional Words Practice

Students won't even realize that you've snuck some positional word practice into the lesson as they work on building their reading skills with this interactive emergent reader!

A printable Gingerbread Man manipulative moves around on the pages of the book.

Activity mats are also included to use at your centers. Glue corresponding mats back to back and laminate them so that on one side students will have a guide, and on the other, they will be able to practice on their own with the manipulatives. They are a great way for students to self check what they know!

3) The Gingerbread Man: Left or Right?

This fun Gingerbread Man reader will take students visually through the story while practicing right and left directions. It also focuses on the sight words "my" "little" "is" "to" "the" "of" and repeats them on every page of the book.

Have your kiddos trace the dotted arrows on each page so they are focusing on which way each direction goes.

The last page lets them draw a picture of themselves, as the Gingerbread Man stands to the left of them.

All of these readers can also be found in a large Gingerbread Man Bundle of 21 math and literacy activities that includes 230 Gingerbread Man related pages to print for your kiddos. Wow!

Here's a sneak peek at some of the other activities included.

There's over 230 pages total to print!!

Cool School is one of my favorite YouTube channels for Kindergarten. Here is Cool School's version of the story of the gingerbread man!

Also, here is a recipe for making gingerbread smelling play dough. I especially like the Christmas gift idea! Check it out:

Here are some cute Gingerbread Man crafts that are easy to set up and simple to do.

I like the tray idea for this first craft. It's way less messier than putting the items into individual bowls or cups!

I love this next one... A gingerbread man ornament craft. Simple enough to do individually at a center!

Thanks for letting me share these with you. I hope your littles love and enjoy them. I also hope they make your teaching life just a tad bit easier!

PIN ME FOR LATER!...

-Til next time

Bek

I know Thanksgiving hasn't yet passed, but I wanted to get this out to you guys so that you will have a head start heading into December. I'm gonna keep it quick and to the point today.

I've bundled together every single one of my December resources. You read that correctly! Every. Single. One. Which means two things.... 1) You can have all the extra resources you need all in one download. 2) You can your precious hard-earned $$$ (and use it on a little something for yourself) by getting all of these together in one pack.

So here's what I got for you.

I'm calling it the December Holidays MEGA Pack.

Looking for holiday activities? This December mega pack will go right along with the other crafts, games, and ideas you have planned for your preschool, kindergarten, or first grade kids. Includes math, phonics, literacy, and more! Includes gingerbread man, Christmas, Santa, nativity, polar express, and more! #christmas #polarexpress #gingerbread #gingerbreadman #winter #december #kindergarten #math #literacy #holidays

This MEGA pack comes with over 550 pages of printouts you can download and use with your littles this December. A variety of themes are included, such as Polar Express, Gingerbread Man, Nativity, Santa, Winter, Christmas Carols, & more.

There are all types of activities including emergent readers, Common Core aligned morning work, pocket chart pieces, high frequency word practice, pattern & number review, fun sheets, Color-By activities, vowel reinforcement, alphabet & handwriting practices, & so much more.

You can find a very detailed description of all that's included HERE.

Get it now so that you can spend some time browsing and deciding which activities you want to print after Thanksgiving. Make this December a stress-LESS one by staying ahead of the game. I promise, you'll be glad you did!

Hang in there! And have a blessed Thanksgiving.

-Til next time

Bek

It's January...which means it's Polar Habitat time!

Today I'm going to show you what's included in my winter top-seller Polar Habitat Pack. You'll find everything you need...and more...to supplement your Polar Animals theme. This non-fiction pack includes more than 200 pages of activities. It was made with PreK-2nd in mind. Most of the activities can be as easy or as hard as you want them to be.

Set of 3 Differentiated Emergent Readers

(With Corresponding Class Books)

Each book is 15 pages long. There are 3 different levels to choose from.

Easy - "The penguin lives in the polar habitat."

Medium -"The penguin spends most of its time in the water hunting for food."

Hard - "The penguin spends most of its time in the water hunting for food. It is not able to fly, even though it has wings."

There are also colorful, matching class books for each level. You can laminate and bind them or even just hang them around the classroom to use as 'facts posters'.

Vocabulary Posters & Pocket Chart Pieces

Here is a list of the Polar animals/objects that are included in these posters and pocket chart pieces:

...ice floe, (blue) whale, seal, penguin, walrus, puffin, snow goose, moose, Arctic fox, Arctic hare, snowy owl, polar bear, igloo, Eskimo & Inuit (You can choose which term is used in your location. I recognize that in some areas, "Eskimo" is considered derogatory and yet in others it is the acceptable term, so I've included both.)

Write the Room {Polar Hunt} Activity

This Write-the-Room comes with colorful animal/object pieces that you can hide around the room! Send your kids hunting for Polar themed animals/objects and then have them write the ones they find.

Polar Flip Book

Color, cut, & glue various Polar themed animals/objects to create a Flip Book. A great activity to practice fluency!

Polar Organizers & Fact Sheets

These organizers and fact sheets are perfect for individual research projects. All of the animals/objects listed above are included. Once they are completed, you can laminated and bind them to make a class book!

Labeling (Writing or Cut/Paste) Sheets

You can choose if you want your littles to cute and paste the words into the blanks...or have them write the words. There's plenty of room to do either way.

Polar Head Bands

Simply color, cut out, and glue onto a sentence strip to make the perfect Polar Animal Head Band. A perfect 'costume' pieces for students to wear after completing their individual animal report. You can have them wear it while they stand in front of the class and tell facts about the animal they researched!

FREE Polar Color-by-Number Activity

You may have seen that I blogged the other day about this Polar Color-by-Number FREEBIE. It's part of my Polar Habitat Pack too!

Well, I hope these Polar themed activities make implementing your theme a breeze! Thanks for stopping by!

-Til next time

Bek

I have a new release out!

Polar Habitat Label It

It includes 16 full sized classroom posters, 16 pocket chart pieces...

...and 12 animals to label!

The Label It printouts come three different ways so that you can best choose what type of writing lines your littles need.

I like this labeling set so much that I'm going to start making more of them to go with other themes as well!

Hope you enjoy them as well,

-Til next time

Bek

Happy New Year!

Let's get the New Year started with a FREEBIE!

January Common Curriculum Everyday FREEBIE

These daily math, literacy, and writing activity sheets were made, with the common core standards in mind, to be independent practice sheets for students to do as morning work, homework, at a center, or for use in any other way you would see fit!

If you like it, you might be interested in the full pack, which includes enough pages for the entire month of January! Each week follows the same format so that students can work independently after the first day of instruction.

This resource is also available in a Common Curriculum Everyday Bundle.

Hoping 2016 brings amazing things your way!

-Til next time

Bek

It's Polar Habitat time!

One of my favorite themes to incorporate in the classroom.

To get you started, I have this FREE quick-print Polar themed Color-by-Number just for you!

There's also information inside the download about how you can get your hands on even MORE Polar Habitat fun.

Need more FREE resources? How about these Penguin Poetry pages...

What else can you do to bring your Polar Unit to life?

Do you need more art ideas?

This Polar Bear Print is a favorite of mine,

from the Preschoolers Want 2 Know blog...

Or what about these cute egg carton penguins from KiwiCrate...

Cute, Cute, Cute!

Don't forget fun games for your classroom:

I ordered this game from MPMSchoolSupplies.com to go along with our Polar Animals unit. This game offers a fun way for students to develop logical thinking skills and spatial reasoning abilities. Plus, let's admit it, it's just downright adorable!

The back of the box gives an example of what the game and pieces looks like:

The blue tray was quite a bit smaller than I was expecting, but then I realized that if it were larger, then the pieces would have to be larger and that might make it more difficult for students to use.

Five penguin ice floes are included of various shapes. The penguins slide up and down on the pieces, causing the pieces to take a new form. This alone take the game to a whole new level!

Did I mention already how CUTE the penguins are? Ok, just checking!

A Challenge Book is included for kids to use. It offers Starter, Junior, Expert, and Master challenges. As well as...answer keys! (Phew, thank goodness, haha!)

Students must work to put the penguins in the matching places on the blue game tray.

Directions are included in the front inside cover of the Challenge Book:

This is what Starter challenges looks like:

Here are some Junior challenges:

And a sample of Expert challenges:

And finally, some of the Master challenges:

Thank goodness for Answer Keys! {wink!}

My kids wanted to instantly start with the Master challenges, but quickly learned they needed to start with the Starter ones first. This is my son, who is going into 2nd grade, attempting to solve some of the Starter challenges. He didn't realize at first that the penguin his right hand is touching, slides up and down the ice floe, creating a new shape for the piece.

It took him a good fifteen minutes before figuring out the first Starter challenge! Even my husband took a stab at helping him out. (Were we just making this more complicated than it needed to be? Or do we as a family just need more practice on our logical thinking skills, lol!)

I loved watching him think as he worked. It's actually a lot harder than you may think! Take a try yourself, you might be surprised!

I very highly recommend this game! It's a ton of fun and will be a great surprise to pull out during our Polar Animals unit. I'm thinking the kids can do it at indoor recess as well.

You can find Penguins on Ice and other games like it under the Critical Thinking Games tab at MPM School Supplies.