Our Gingerbread Unit

I teach a world geography class at my co-op for children in Kindergarten to grade 4. Each week, we do map work, color a flag, read a story and complete a craft or other activity from the country we are studying. As we approach Christmas, we are studying how other countries celebrate. Last week was my favorite. We were studying Germany.

For Germany, we learned about one of my favorite German treats, gingerbread. I read the book "Gingerbread Baby" by Jan Brett and then we made paper gingerbread men. I also had a station where the children came in small groups to decorate their own gingerbread man cookie.

My own children liked this so much, we continued studying this book at home during the week, using pages from my literature unit for this book.

We were having so much fun with gingerbread, that we didn't want to quit. When we popped over to our local library, I found a fun new book to help us: "The Ninjabread Man". Okay, who doesn't like ninjas? So we had to bring it home. It quickly became our go to bedtime book.

Then I found this little gem at the World Market Plus: Ninjabread Cookie Cutters. So we invited some friends over for a ninjabread decorating contest. Don't they look delicious?