Gingerbread Activities for Preschoolers

Our Gingerbread Unit Study Workbook is full of gingerbread activities for preschoolers. Little learners will have so much fun this holiday season using this workbook with a gingerbread man theme for history, science, STEM, language arts, writing, math, art, and Bible.

Enjoy gingerbread cookies and celebrate the Christmas season while making learning fun for preschool through first grade students. This Gingerbread Unit Study Workbook can be used in lesson plans for classroom teachers and homeschool families alike. 

These adorable gingerbread man activities were created to print and use, no prep necessary to use these pages. Some of the playful learning activities may require extra supplies, like paint or gingerbread cookies, but there is no required cutting or laminating.

So get ready to make learning fun this Christmas season and head to the bottom of this post to grab your Gingerbread Unit Study Workbook.

Gingerbread History

The unit study starts off with a little bit about what gingerbread is and where it comes from. This is a great way to kick off your gingerbread Christmas activities, so that young learners will know more about what they are working with throughout this gingerbread bundle.

Feel free to guide your young students in looking up more information about gingerbread. You can even find different gingerbread recipes and try out a few for the perfect way to make this learning more hands on.

You can even bake gingerbread to make your own gingerbread house or cookies. You may even find a fun gingerbread play dough recipe to use this season!

Turn this little history lesson into a research lesson and you may find all sorts of fun activities!

Gingerbread Science

​Enjoying gingerbread man cookies while doing a five sense investigation is a super fun way to to accomplish your science lesson plans this holiday season. Included in this gingerbread bundle is a Five Senses Gingerbread Investigation where students will record what they see, feel, smell, taste, and hear while eating some delicious gingerbread cookies.

Students can write sentences about what their cookies look like on the cookie sheet or after they take a bite. They can describe how the gingerbread cookie smells and feels.

Young learners will enjoy taste the gingerbread cookies and then writing what it tasted like. They can also write what they heard as they took a bite of the cookie.

Provided on the investigation page are sentence prompts for each sense for students to trace to begin their sentence and then space for them to complete the sentence on their own. You can differentiate this activity depending on your students grade level by providing more assistance or letting them complete the writing independently.

In addition to the gingerbread investigation is a sink or float experiment.  Young children will have a great time testing what happens with gingerbread men when you place them in cups with different types of liquid.

After observing the different ways the gingerbread cookies react to the different liquids students can draw what they saw. This activity is perfect for all children because there is no required writing, so even the youngest learners can participate.

If you would like to extend this experiment, you can have older students write a sentence about what happened in each cup. You could also have your students make predictions about what will happen before you place the gingerbread cookie in each liquid.

Gingerbread STEM

For a fun STEM activity, we have included building gumdrop shapes. You will need gumdrops and toothpicks to have your young learners complete this activity.

This would be a fun hand-on activity for classroom teachers to make part of your sensory table or small group during a themed gingerbread week. And what a great way for young children to build their fine motor skills!

Just provide students with the gumdrops and toothpicks and ask them to make three different shapes. Once they complete each shape they will draw a picture of what they created in each box.

This is another great activity that can be easily differentiated. Younger students can start out with basic shapes, like a square or triangle. You can even model and give step by step instructions on how to build them if needed.

Older students can build more complex shapes, like an octagon, or even 3D shapes. They can also label their shapes with either the name of the shape or with shape vocabulary (vertex, side, etc.).

There is also a writing activity in this unit study where students will describe their gingerbread house after decorating it. You can turn this into a STEM activity buy having students build the house themselves before decorating.

Gingerbread Art

​We have included two gingerbread man crafts in this printable bundle. It would be a fun idea for classroom teachers to use these gingerbread crafts as Christmas presents for students to make for parents.

The first craft is Gingerbread Finger Painting. Students will use their fingers and paint to “decorate” their gingerbread man. They can make dots for the eyes and buttons, make squiggly lines for icing, or decorate the cookie however they would like.

The next craft is a fun gingerbread man painting activity where students will use “puffy” paint to paint the gingerbread man outline. Directions for making puffy paint are included.

This is another great way to incorporate your preschool gingerbread theme into a sensory table activity. You can have students paint with their fingers to get that sensory experience that is so beneficial for them.

Student will also enjoy the Gingerbread Friends and Gingerbread House coloring pages. These would make a fun warm-up or early completion activity for classroom teachers or a fun coloring activity for homeschool families while listening to a read aloud book.

Gingerbread Writing and Language Arts

To incorporate this festive theme into your writing lesson plans we have included where students can decorate a gingerbread house and gingerbread man then draw a picture of what they created. There is a provided sentence prompt for them to write a sentence describing what they decorated.

There are also writing activities for working on sequencing, adjectives, and sight words. These pages would be the perfect addition for incorporating fun gingerbread man activities into your first grade lesson plans.

​Kindergarten and preschool families and teachers will enjoy the matching uppercase and lowercase letters worksheets. Students will draw lines from the lowercase letters to their corresponding uppercase letters for all twenty-six letters.

There are also tracing pages for uppercase and lowercase letters for students to build their fine motor skills while practicing handwriting. Another matching activity is included for young learners to practice identifying beginning sounds by matching uppercase letters to the corresponding beginning sound pictures.

Young learners can practice prepositions with a gingerbread man theme preposition game. One person will hide the cut out gingerbread man while the other person closes their eyes.

Once the gingerbread man is hidden the person doing the seeking will sing the gingerbread men song while trying to find where the cut out was hidden. After they find the gingerbread man they will describe where they found it using prepositions (under the chair, beside the pencil, on top of the table, etc.).

You can tie math into language arts with the ten little gingerbread men song and the gingerbread color words activities. These are great way for students to practice color and number sight words.

Gingerbread Math

There are a variety of math worksheets in this gingerbread unit. We have included worksheets that give students practice with identifying same and different, number order, and small, medium, and large.

There is a gingerbread theme search and find. Children will enjoy finding the different gingerbread cookies on the cookie sheet.

Students will also practice addition, subtraction, and more and less than.  We have even included graphing and patterns with gingerbread cookies. 

Gingerbread Extras

The Gingerbread Unit Study closes out with a Gingerbread Chase brain break activity, tracing Bible verses, and a booklist. Young children will enjoy all the different movements in the Gingerbread Chase.

The Bible verses included in this bundle have a fun gingerbread theme. Tracing these verses give children a chance to strengthen their fine motor skills, practice penmanship, and learn and memorize Bible verses.

At the end of the unit is a book list with different gingerbread man books. There are just a few book suggestions with different versions of the gingerbread man story.

There a SO many addition gingerbread books from the gingerbread boy to the gingerbread baby. It would be a fun idea to grab as many different stories as you can from the library and compare them to the classic story of the gingerbread man.

​The first page in this bundle is a cover page with a fun gingerbread man and a line for students to write their name. Feel free to print as many copies of this gingerbread unit as you need once you purchase!

You can grab the Gingerbread Unit Study Workbook here.

Be sure to share all your favorite gingerbread activities on social media and tag us on Instagram @abelovedhope! I would love to see your students enjoying their gingerbread fun.

And don’t forget to follow us to stay up to date on everything in our shop. I also share about our homeschooling journey and homeschool encouragement. 

We also have some free printables you can find in our stories. If you love unit studies check out our Pumpkin Unit Study Workbook.