Gingerbread Science

I always vow to have an academic and calm December after I am rocking myself in the corner trembling in tinsel.    There’s such a fine line between embracing the wonder of the season and keeping your management and academics on track!  Today I am sharing Gingerbread Science!  These activities will hit your standards while providing a cross curricular structure and routine! …Plus they are so cute!!  The latest and most adorable yet, the Gingerbread Science book!  If you don’t have the time  to make the gingerbread house book, no big deal, the activities fit right into a composition book or science notebook!

Gingerbread Science Activities

Enjoying the many versions of the gingerbread story in December is a MUST DO for reading.  There’s just so much to love about guessing if this version will cause dear Gingy to lose his little life or not at the end.   Beyond reading, there’s so much to learn using the highly exciting topic of gingerbread!  In fact, I am compiling 12 activities into a fun gingerbread folding interactive book!

Save the decorating for the very end as a bribe motivator for quality work and completion of activities.  This ensures that the adorable gingerbread house books will stay in tact.  The activities inside can take anywhere from a week to three weeks depending how often and how much time you want to devote to it.  I typically spend 30 mins a day completing one activity per day over two weeks.  Some of the activities that are not tied to an experiment or class activity can be done in a center independently

 

What You Need

Keeping it super simple is always a priority in December.  Here’s a SHORT list of what to grab at the store for the booklet.  You can also choose to not include an activity if it doesn’t meet your needs.  You can customize it anyway you like!

gingerbread cookies (any)

gumdrops

toothpicks

1 small can of soda

1 cup milk

1 cup juice

1 cup water

A Peek at the Activities

Here’s a look at some of the fun that you will have learning with gingerbread!  We will observe as scientists recording our findings under each flap.  When we get to tasting the gingerbread, I instruct students to take one small bite.  This is because it leads into the next activity!

Once all of the students have tasted the gingerbread cookie, we graph the results of how we bit the gingerbread cookie and use tallys to analyze our graph.

On a different day we wonder why the gingerbread doesn’t just swim across the river?  Can he float?  We want to know!  This experiment tests how long Gingy can float in water.  First we each make our prediction in seconds or minutes, next we test and observe, and finally we record our findings and reflect on our findings.

Once we realize that Gingy in fact, can not do well in water, we wonder if he would do better in other liquids.  Which liquid causes Gingy to dissolve the quickest?  Milk, juice, water, or soda?  Only one way to find out!  Let’s test it!

This can certainly be kept simple by using just plain white copy paper and a science notebook.  If you happen to get your kicks off of folds and bright paper, #extra , Then here’s what it can look like!

Students count sides and vertices of 2D and 3D shapes they build with gumdrops and toothpicks and record them under the flap.

Here’s more of the booklet for you to view!

Activities Included:

Label a gingerbread cookie

Attributes of a gingerbread man

Where do we bite first? Graphing

Gingerbread floating experiment

Disappearing gingerbread experiment

Gumdrop geometry

Gingerbread five senses

Compare/contrast gingerbread and chocolate chip cookies

Gingerbread ingredients

Gingerbread facts

Gingerbread pre-writing (opinion, ingredients, traditions)

Gingerbread writing

 

Scientists share their facts and findings with the world, so as a culminating activity, students work through some different organizers and then write their results inside.

The Cover

Students finally make it to the bribe exciting ending by getting to create a gingerbread house cover for their booklet of learning!

If you want to check this out, just click HERE or click the picture of the cover below.  I am also going to link up the other December/holiday themed activity books I have in case this is speaking your love language.  🙂 Not able to teach holidays?  I have a penguin book linked up for you!