Looking for some fun gingerbread activities to add to your Christmas lesson plans for preschool? Look no further. This post is loaded with gingerbread alphabet games for preschoolers.
With adorable gingerbread people and equally adorable gingerbread houses, your preschoolers will delight in these festive literacy games this holiday season!
Don’t forget to grab your free gingerbread printable at the end of this post and check out a list of other awesome gingerbread preschool activities!
Gingerbread Alphabet Activities for Preschoolers
The other day my kinder-aged son interrupted a phone conversation I was having with a friend with what, at the time, was the biggest and most important thing on his mind.
Now, we are still a ways out from Christmas, but that doesn’t keep my little boys from asking for our best Christmas activities, and currently, gingerbread activities.
“Can we make a gingerbread house as big as Adam?” My little boy asked in total and complete seriousness. Adam is his two-year-old little brother, but the way.
Here’s the thing. I’m not a fantastic baker. Or rather, not a patient one, especially when I have little helping hands in the kitchen.
But I had an alternative solution. Gingerbread activities for preschoolers. Or gingerbread activities for kindergartners. Or…well…just gingerbread activities that don’t involve real gingerbread house building.
Specifically, I’ve come up with six gingerbread alphabet activities for preschoolers, but these are also very fitting for my kinder-age son. That said, I think all the gingerbread fun we’ve been having only makes him want to make his own gingerbread house all the more!
But, I’m offering a free gingerbread printable in this post, as well as five fun activities you can do with it! So, lots of gingerbread alphabet activities for your preschool lesson plans this Christmas.
Gingerbread Alphabet Activities
This post includes a free printable, but I’m sharing with you five ways to have fun with it! In addition to that, be sure to check out some other gingerbread activity links at the end of this post.
Gingerbread Alphabet Activity #1 – Make a Gingerbread Man “Train”
I wasn’t sure what else to call this activity. You may have read my Alphabet Train post with its free printable. Well, this is the same concept, but instead your preschooler will line up the gingerbread men in alphabetical order.
Each gingerbread man card only has a single letter on it. So you can make this more or less challenging for your preschooler by using all the letters, both upper and lower case at once, or you can choose just one set at a time.
For additional practice, have your preschooler add letter manipulatives over the top of each card. This gingerbread alphabet is perfectly sized for more magnetic letter manipulatives.
Gingerbread Alphabet Activity #2 – Student Pick
Sometimes, preschoolers or kindergartners get an idea in their head and can’t let it go. If you have a preschooler like that, no worries! It’s okay to let your preschooler choose a gingerbread letter card and make their gingerbread line-up all out of order. Then challenge them to find the corresponding letter manipulatives to add to the cards.
Then, once they have completed their line-up, have your preschooler go back to the beginning and see if they can sing the alphabet song in the order they lined up the cards. That’s a fun challenge!
Gingerbread Alphabet Activity #3 – Matching Upper and Lower Case Letters
You don’t have to limit yourself to just making gingerbread “trains” with this printable. You can also just play alphabet matching games. Match the upper and lower case letters together followed by adding the corresponding letter manipulative and you have twice the letter practice in a single, super simple, activity!
Gingerbread Alphabet Activity #4 – Alphabet Concentration
Playing concentration is a classic children’s game, but for good reason. It helps develop their cognitive skills! Since these gingerbread cards have the alphabet on them, children get a little extra letter practice while they’re at it.
Here’s how we play. We like to pretend that the gingerbread men want to go home to their gingerbread house, but to do so they have to find their matching letter. So, when the children make a letter match, those gingerbread men get to go home, rather than staying with the child. This twist turns the classic game of Concentration into a cooperative game, rather than competitive.
Oh, and don’t use the entire alphabet at once. That’s just too many cards for preschoolers! Start with letters with which they are familiar, like those in their names.
Gingerbread Alphabet Activity #5 – Gingerbread Men Names
Speaking of names, our all-time favorite way to use this free gingerbread man printable is to use the alphabet cards to spell our names. We did this in our Alphabet Train printable, so I should have suspected my little boys would want to add it to our gingerbread alphabet activities!
Here is the progression we made. First, use the alphabet cards to spell the name.
Then, use letter manipulatives to make matches to the cards. For younger preschoolers, you should set out the letters they need. Older preschoolers might be able to search through a bin of letters for the ones they need.
Next, invite your preschooler to spell their name while pointing to each letter.
Then, pull the letters away from the cards to blend the sounds together to spell the name!
As a preschool teacher, I love this gingerbread alphabet activity the best because my preschoolers get four times the name spelling practice in just one activity!
Gingerbread Alphabet Activity #6 – CVC Words or Sight Words
If you have an older preschooler, you can follow the same steps as activity number five and practice cvc words or even sight words! My kinder son is just starting to decode cvc words, so this was a fun way to practice them!
First, I invited my son to name the letters from left to right. Then, give me the sounds. I then modeled for him how to decode the word and then blend the sounds together. Then he gave it a try. This was a really positive way for him to practice decoding.
Other Ways to Use This FREE Gingerbread Man Printable
The possibilities are endless, really. But here are just a few more ideas.
- For younger preschoolers, have them pick a gingerbread man and say the letter sounds over and over as they march the gingerbread man to the house mat.
- For older preschoolers, have them sort the gingerbread men by the way they look and then see if the letters have anything in common.
- Hang the house on the wall and add the gingerbread men around the house as the letters are reviewed over the holiday season.
Get Your FREE Gingerbread Alphabet Activities Printable!
Think you want this printable? With so many creative ways to use it, I bet you do! Just click the download button below, but be sure to keep reading for a few more links with brand new gingerbread activities for preschoolers!
Want More Gingerbread Man Activities?
You’ve got to take at look at these! They are newly published from some of my favorite preschool bloggers!
FROM LEFT TO RIGHT:
Gingerbread Alphabet Activities
Gingerbread Fine Motor Number Cards
I’m Sarah, an educator turned stay-at-home-mama of five! I’m the owner and creator of Stay At Home Educator, a website about intentional teaching and purposeful learning in the early childhood years. I’ve taught a range of levels, from preschool to college and a little bit of everything in between. Right now my focus is teaching my children and running a preschool from my home. Credentials include: Bachelors in Art, Masters in Curriculum and Instruction.
[…] try any one of these six Christmas alphabet activities! Try them in circle time or add them to your preschool literacy […]