Gingerbread Pirates

This week is "Gingerbread Pirate Week" in our first grade community!  We just finished a fun unit where we created a gingerbread village with our students.  Now we are continuing this gingerbread theme by having a gingerbread pirate week.  Our spelling pattern this week is "ar".  I have seen many units on "ar" with pirates.  I borrowed some ideas and adapted them for our gingerbread pirate unit. 

On Monday, when the students came in, I introduced the theme of the Gingerbread Pirate week by having some fun Scrappin' Doodles clip art up in our morning message.  We then brainstormed some "arrrrrrrrr" words in pirate voices.   Next we read the book: The Gingerbread Pirates by Kristin Kladstrup.

This was fun because we have read SO MANY different gingerbread stories in the past months.  While reading we listened for more "ar" words.  Then we read a poem, did a word sort, and played some "ar" games!  You can find everything we did by clicking on the pictures below.  There is also a template to put together a gingerbread pirate and write "ar" words on his stomach! 

<Images Provided by Scrappin' Doodles>

Gingerbread Card Game

I hope everyone out there had a great turkey day!  I definitely stuffed myself, and now my first graders and I are back in action.  I have a great subtraction game for you!  The game calls for a deck of cards  with the face cards removed.  I found some SUPER cute gingerbread playing cards for $2.00 at Joann Fabrics.  Click on the picture below for full instructions and the game board!

<Images provided by Scrappin' Doodles>

Gingerbread Fun!

So I have been waiting to post some things until it is more appropriate for the general first grade community!  In our first grade community we are working on building a "Gingerbread Village".  One of my wonderful, amazing friends gave me a copy of the unit their team uses in their classroom to create a community of gingerbread workers.  It is really an amazing unit, but in order to finish before the break begins, we start in October!  We begin by reading all different kinds of gingerbread stories.  The last gingerbread story has a surprise ending where we are instructed to build a village for a community of gingerbread people!  While we work on this unit, everything is related to our gingerbread village.  Therefore, I have created some fun gingerbread activities!  These are fun to have around when it gets closer to the holidays, so use them whenever it's appropriate for you!

This activity is a subtraction word problem page.  It uses the gingerbread men to create fun subtraction stories.

The above activity was used as a Writer's Workshop mini-lesson.  The previous day we read "The Gingerbread Man Loose in the School" by Laura Murray.  This has some amazing verbs in it!  The day of the lesson, we taught what a verb was, and then gave examples from this book of other things gingerbread men can do!  The students then had to use a verb for their gingerbread character and draw a picture of their character doing this action!  We brainstormed a HUGE list to choose from.

<<Images provided by Scrappin' Doodles>>