Thematic Learning with Gingerbread

It smells like sugar, spice, and everything nice in the kindergarten classrooms! The kindergarten students have recently been working through a thematic gingerbread unit, incorporating literacy and math skills with hands-on activities.

During the gingerbread unit, students heard many read-aloud versions of the traditional Gingerbread Man story where they worked on comparing and contrasting story elements, discussed text-to-text connections, made predictions, and worked on sequencing and retelling. In writing, students created their own gingerbread recipes and wrote the steps for gingerbread cookies, which strengthening their understanding of writing lists. Kindergarten students also used their five senses to see, taste, touch, and smell many foods made with ginger such as gingerbread cookies, ginger ale, and real ginger root. Math centers for the week were also based around gingerbread. Students worked on addition, subtraction and graphing skills. At the end of the week, the students looked forward to making their own edible gingerbread houses during snack. Each house was unique and special just like them.

Thematic learning is an important and unique aspect of the early childhood and kindergarten curriculum at Oakhill. When students engage in learning with a common theme, it encourages them to make connections through multiple disciplines, which strengthens understanding.