GINGERBREAD WEEK with an easy & cheap lapbook design

We just finished up the week talking about the gingerbread man, house, mouse, and baby. I found the "GINGERBREAD BABY", "GINGERBREAD MAN", "GINGERBREAD MOUSE", and we learned about the history about gingerbread houses. They also worked on their lap book that I created from a frew printable that I found on numerous websites.(I explained further about the lap book next.) We made peppermint hot chocolate with a candy cane. We are going to make both a paper gingerbread house and also a gingerbread mini house out of graham crackers and peanut butter as glue, marshmellow christmas trees, and sugar free candy. I will take pictures this weekend after they are made.

I know my household is on a tight budget, and we are always trying to find new ways to get the message across to our children in a fun way. I love lap books, but those vanilla file folders are not cheap. I have found a way to use those cheap three prong 2 pocket folders. At the beginning of the school year's back to school sales, you can get these folders very cheap. I have seen them as cheap as five cents each.



What I do is take two of these folders, either cut off one side or use both and tape them in the middle where the prongs are. I currently used one for my son's Gingerbread man/baby lap book theme. I had found some wonderful units, themes, lap book, and miscellaneous printables to put into this lap book. I have also laminated everything in the lap book so that it can be reused by my sons and even in the future by my daughter(she is only 1 yrs right now). I love for the fact that I can place these neatly in a hanging file folder with other printables for that theme, including crafts and projects.

This gingerbread lap book has a puzzle (removable pieces) on the front with their name plate on it, then on the first opening there is a house with the gingerbread baby inside the door (stuck on with Velcro (removable), the Upper & lower alphabet recognition cards, gingerbread man counting book, two questions pertaining to a gingerbread story book, making patterns, and animals in the book recognition. Then the next section has the Gingerbread Baby game from Jan Brett, colors and shapes sorter cards, gingerbread man spelling cards, worksheets (prewriting, gingerbread G tracer pages, another pattern recognition sheet, Size sequencing cards, and Eating a gingerbread man order of sequence cards (gingerbread men are stuck on with velcro to place all pieces on the table for the child). On the back I got a blank gingerbread man and I wrote the instructions for my sons to take 4 objects of different sizes and to trace around the outside of the gingerbread man and see how many it will take, and then to graph their results. I have found that I can get a lot more on these folders then I can with the file folder idea. I also like the idea of having the two pockets in the folder to house the worksheets and booklets.

This lapbook cost me the time to pint out the sheets, the lil ink for the printer, about 20 laminating pouches (6.99 for 50 at BJ's warehouse), two 3 prong pocket folder (free- had them among my supples), clear shipping tape, and a child eager to learn.

I would like to thank these following bloggers for their wonderful FREE printables. My sons also thank you too.

prekinders.com/gingerbread-theme/
mrsnelsonsclass gingerbread poems, printables, lessons, and stories
homeschoolshare

POPCORN words (frequently used sight words)

My stuggles with these words so much, and with these being the mostly used words among the sight word's list, I  decided to make something fun for him to remember and practice these words in a way. I try to get practice worksheets for him to rewrite, find, and search out for these words. I go to sight words worksheets, Dolch Sight Word Activities, and popcorn words printables. I also have my son log into  Starfall's Learn to read and Progressive Phonics for free online books for him to read and build up his phonics and sight words. I have also found a list of these popcorn words at popcorn words and sight words kindergarten.



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popcorn bucket

 

I have also created my own visual enforcer of these words for my son. I have created popcorn kernals with the words on them, a popcorn bucket (son colored in the stripes), and then I laminated them. I then added the words he knows, and will be adding 2 more a day until he is caught up with his class. I took some vanilla paper and drew the kernals on it, white poster board and made the popcorn bucket. 

please excuse the primative drawings... just a visual to help



  

 

Apple Character Tree (door to classroom)

Here is the start to my Apples for Character tree is made from brown shipping paper as the trunk, 4 sheets of green posterboard for the tree's leaves, and 1 posterboard for the ground.

 The apples look like this... I only will show a couple, but I will post the link to share the apples as my sons learn them. I downloaded the editable red apples on sparklebox.com and replaced the letters that were there with the character words. I will cut these out individually and then laminate them for more duribility. Then I can just tape them onto the tree. I have found that I can teach this to all of my children, and I know that it won't hurt starting out at a young age.

Green Editable Apples (Red is also available)

I have found numerous sites to help establish a list of characters that can be taught to children. There is also places to go to print out worksheets to aid in teaching these to children.

* character building worksheets   * character_studies

* nursery rhymes - characters      * Children w/good Character                                         

* Character Ed Themes              * character counts resources

* character building worksheets  * 10 day character study

* christian character                               There are also books that you can check out at your local library that can help with more assistance towards teaching these traits and virtues to help build up our children's character.

Alphabet Printables/Workbox Ideas

I got these wonderful printables from another homeschooling site. I fell in love with them once I saw them. There is ABC puzzles, practice cards, 3 letter words for each letter, ASL cards, constant cards, short and long vowel cards, dot to dot cards, phonetic cards, print and cursive puzzles, playdough mats, coloring pages, cut and paste sheets, and links to other great inspirational sites.

My 2 yr old loves these. He has learned half of his alphabet bot upper and lower case letters. He has learned to show readiness in writing with the prewriting cards with the practice letter cards, he has learned to match, sign, and at the same time. HE IS HAVING FUN. ( I dont push the learning on him, he wants to learn with his brother, now to just get potty trained and we will be set).

Alphabet Resources

Igloo with Recycled Plastic Milk Cartons

Instructions for Creating an Igloo with Recycled Plastic Milk Cartons

Igloos are cool. You can easily build an milk jug igloo in your classroom with some planning, lots of milk jugs and hot glue.

For example, the children in Classroom 1 at Midland Christian School (Midland, Michigan) built the 428-jug igloo shown here after collecting (and cleaning) milk cartons for about 3 weeks. This medium-sized igloo is large enough to hold about 8 to 10 kindergardeners or first graders during free reading time -- and a principal fits in there too. Total cost: about $12 for 80 glue sticks. The milk jug igloo provides all sorts of opportunities for links to social studies, math, science and reading topics.

Video: How to Build a Milk Jug Igloo

Directions for building your own milk jug igloo.

 

Practical Tips for Planning & Building a Plastic Igloo from Gallon Jugs

Here are some things to keep in mind.

This is what we learned when building a milk jug igloo for the classroom:

1. Promote Jug Collection - Our milk jug igloo took more than 400 milk jugs. That's a lot of milk -- and orange juice, water and so forth. We put up posters signed by the children and inserted a notice in the school's print and e-newsletters in order to get the entire school of 100 students to help the collection effort. In addition our teenage sons liberated milk jugs from recycling bins in various areas of the city during their appointed recycling day. A parent also helped out by collecting jugs daily from a local coffee shop, which was an excellent source. It took us 3 weeks to get all the jugs we needed.
2. Wash Jugs Well - You'll want to wash the jugs well as they arrive, or your classroom will begin to smell pretty bad -- and you'll be teaching a lesson on microbiology instead of snow. We strung the jugs in groups of 10 and stored them in a corner of the room.
3. Use a Cardboard Base - Using a cardboard box as a base will give your igloo stability as you glue the first row down. You can get a large box from your local big box or appliance store on delivery day. A refrigerator box works well.
4. Use HIGH TEMPERATURE Hot Glue - You'll need a HIGH temperature hot glue gun and HIGH temperature hot glue to put everything together. The Inuit call it an "iglu," which is appropriate because you'll use lots of hot glu. We used about 80 long sticks, which cost about $12. We only had a low temperature gun, so we had to buy a new dual temperature gun. That was about $14 on sale. So our total igloo investment was under $25. Because of the dangers of getting burned, the children played a limited role in the actual construction, but there was still plenty for them to do with counting, graphing, making patterns out of the lids, washing and so forth.
5. Collect Extra Caps - Most milk jugs we collected didn't come with their lids. You may want to start early collecting just caps so that you have enough to make patterns and decorate the final result.
6. It Takes Time - We built a few rows a day,mostly after school, then more on weekends. It likely took 12 man hours total for the size of igloo we built, which easily holds 8-10 first graders.

Educational Tips for Igloos in Education

A milk jug igloo is a vehicle for teaching many subjects & skills.

1. Pre-plan Your Entire Unit - Your igloo will be part of "a complete breakfast." In other words, it will complement the unit that you are teaching.--whether it's snow, Winter, seasons, geography & cultures, ecology or some other topic. The more you build an interesting unit, the more impact you'll have on achieving your learning objectives. There are all sorts of extra resources listed below. Please add additional ideas using the Feedback area so everyone can benefit from your good ideas.
2. Place an Emphasis on Reading - Your completed igloo will be great for a reading nook, so you'll want to make a special emphasis on what you read as you collect jugs and build your igloo. There are some great ideas listed below. In addition to numerous picture books, many of which the first graders could read themselves, my wife read Mr. Popper's Penguins, which is a classic chapter books suited for this age range.
3. There's Lots of Opportunity for Math - Counting, counting by tens, graphing, estimating, patterns (with the multi-colored caps) and so forth. At which store do most families buy their milk?