spicy activites in the house!

Last week in the classroom we read Gingerbread Baby by Jan Brett. Along with the usual suspects,we set out additional fine motor, math, and craft activities with a little extra spice added, like our story basket complete with a gingerbread baby, gingerbread house, and animal masks printed from Jan Brett's website. I found the gingerbread baby and house at Michael's on clearance a few years ago. They have similar items this year.

These adorable gingerbread men cookies came from Homeschool Creations. I printed them out, laminated them, then backed them with felt. I placed five ofthem on our cookie sheet, along with a spatula and set them on top of a shelf with no explanation. The children took the cookie sheet to the floor and practiced scooping them up with the spatula. All day long I was offered cookies, and at clean up I found them in the play kitchen. The cookie sheet is from an Ikea set and I only had to re-glue one felt back (so far). 

These kooky silicone dealios came from a Japanese Dollar store. I'm not even sure what they are for as they are not sturdy enough for cookie dough or rice. Either way, I pulled out coordinating pompoms and set this up to see what the kiddos would do. They very carefully filled in each gingerbread baby with matching pompoms AND they cleaned it up when they we finished. This photo is from last year, this year, I put the pompoms in a small lidded basket and the element of reveal was really fun to watch. I loved this activity! 

Oh how I love these! I got this happy set from etsy seller how we learn at home, the bowl came with a separate set from another seller. 

So simple and so cool! The mancala board was a thriftstore find and the bells came from the dollar store four years ago. The ladle came from a set of kitchen utensils I found at Tuesday Morning. Setting out the ladle and spatula (above) allowed for an introduction to new tools and vocabulary.

Another fun one from Homeschool Creations. These we for scissors practuce but I laminated them and added Dry Erase markers for line tracing. Again, I had this set up at a table with no explanation and the kiddos sat down on their own and traced the lines! Then they wiped off their lines, turned the sheets over to the blank side and drew pictures. 

I made these felt pieces two years and they are still going strong. On the tray are assorted shapes cut from felt and pieces of yarn and rik-rak. 

This is a retro candy themed matching game from eeboo. The children sort out matches, line up the squares, carry around the pieces, and pass them out as if they were real candy. I love this! 

Last, we have this wooden bead stringing activity that I found last week at Home Goods! Serendipitous! The children love this and again, the pieces end up being used in so many different ways.