Gingerbread Man Exchange

Gingerbread men are a popular staple to the Christmas holiday season.  There are many variations to this fairy tale, which can make for a plethora of lesson ideas: summary, compare and contrast, character study, genre study, cause and effect, etc...                                                              

This year, I have been focusing on building relationships within my classroom à la Conscious Discipline. My last three blogs (1, 2, 3) delved into the beginning stages of implementing the strategies. In November, the opportunity came up to belong to a gingerbread man exchange with kindergarten classrooms across the United States (via a Facebook group), so I thought this would be a great way to continue to build relationships among my students while also making connections with other students.

Our elf, NERF, brought all the supplies with a task card.  The students had to collaborate with a partner to create two different gingerbread man. They had to agree which supplies to use, colors, size, boy or girl, placement of decorations, etc...  Then, as a class, we had to decide what information we wanted to share about our school and classroom with these other classes.  We put the information sheet and gingerbread men into the envelopes and NERF mailed them off for us (22 in total). We eagerly await the mail each day.

Our first packages arrived on Friday.  NERF brought us a United States map so we could chart where each gingerbread came from. We read the information about each school and class.  One class even sent us a salt dough gingerbread ornament scented with ginger to hang on our tree. We've compared our classroom with the others with whom we've already connected.  Mostly we found similarities; one class sent a picture that had the same United States map as us!).

My students and I have enjoyed this activity so much that we are planning to do a Valentine exchange and a spring flower exchange with the same classes. My students are learning that there is a big world out there and that we are more similar than we are different.

Enjoy your winter break and...

Erin Grebel