6 Gingerbread Alphabet Activities for Preschoolers
Looking for some fun gingerbread activities to add to your Christmas lesson plans for preschool? Look no further. This post includes 6 gingerbread alphabet activities for preschoolers that are full of literacy fun!
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!
Christmas is just around the corner and and my little boys keep asking for our best Christmas activities, and currently, gingerbread activities.
Now you may not have the time and energy to build and decorate a full gingerbread house in preschool so enter – 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 kindergarteners too!
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. Plus, if you are looking for more Christmas themed activities to plan for your preschoolers, our Christmas activity pack, Christmas alphabet activity set, or Christmas counting activity pack are perfect for the holiday season!
Gingerbread Man Alphabet Printable
This gingerbread alphabet printable is great for using to practice all sorts of literacy skills. From alphabet knowledge to letter sounds and even simple cvc words or sight words, this one printable can be used in at least 10 different ways!
Plus, it includes an engaging gingerbread theme and is a great way to infuse festive fun at home or in the classroom.
Gingerbread Man Books for Preschoolers
We love reading about the silly antics of the gingerbread man and his silly counterparts like gingerbread baby, gingerbread girl, gingerbread friends, and more! Take a look at some of our absolute favorite gingerbread preschool stories!
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- Schmidt, Karen (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- Boelts, Maribeth (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- Hardcover Book
- Kladstrup, Kristin (Author)
- Amazon Kindle Edition
- Hayes, Renee (Author)
- Hardcover Book
- Murray, Laura (Author)
Gingerbread Man Activities Printable
This activity is perfect for literacy centers, one-on-one practice, and even independent learning! With a focus on alphabet learning, it can be used for letter recognition, letter sounds, and even to build names.
What’s Included
This printable includes one adorable gingerbread house and a complete set of uppercase gingerbread alphabet cards and a complete set of lowercase gingerbread alphabet cards. This set includes 15 color pages of gingerbread alphabet fun!
Additional Materials
You don’t need anything but paper and a printer to get started! If you’d like to add in different manipulatives, you can include alphabet letter magnets to build names, simple words, or cvc words.
The Setup
Simply print the letter pages and the gingerbread house. Laminate for durability (optional). Then cut apart and get ready to use in a variety of ways!
Gingerbread Alphabet Ideas
The different ways to use this literacy printable are seemingly endless but here are six different ways to get you started!
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.
Your preschooler will line up the gingerbread men in alphabetical order… feel free to extend or lessen the amount of letters based on your preschoolers’ needs.
Gingerbread Man Game
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!
Match 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 uppercase and lowercase letters together followed by adding the corresponding letter manipulative and you have twice the letter practice in a single, super simple, activity!
Gingerbread Theme Concentration Game
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.
Name Spelling with Gingerbread Cards
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!
Build CVC 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!
I invited my son to name the letters from left to right. Then, tell 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.
More Ways to Use Gingerbread Man Letter Cards
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.
- Have your preschooler add letter manipulatives over the top of each card. This gingerbread alphabet is perfectly sized for more magnetic letter manipulatives.
Printables for Gingerbread Man Preschool Theme
You’ve got to take at look at these! They are newly published from some of my favorite preschool bloggers!
- Five Little Gingerbread Math Counting Printable
- Gingerbread House Busy Bag
- Fine Motor Number Cards Gingerbread Theme
- Gingerbread Roll and Cover
- Beginning Sound Gingerbread Mats
Gingerbread Toys for Preschoolers
These gingerbread toys are loads of fun for any gingerbread theme and perfect for engaging your preschoolers in the holiday spirit!
- Build sweet structures with sticks, swirls, gumdrops, and more
- Boost fine motor and early STEM skills
- Slice, pretend to bake, and decorate wooden holiday cookies
- Includes a tube of 12 sliceable wooden cookies with 12 decorative toppings, an oven mitt, wooden…
- Crayola products sprinkle a bit of magic on the hidden sparks that light up kids’ imaginations. With…
- Mix and match magnetic tiles from a castle set with rocket tiles, connect doodles to numbers, and…
- Hardcover Book
- Wallace, Adam (Author)
- Package includes 4 folktale stories precut felt figures and 1 felt board: The Mitten, The Little Red…
- Each felt story set consists felt pictures of the characters, elements, the vivid felt pieces are…
- KIDS BAKING SET – Baking time! What delicious cookies will little bakers make with this baking kit?…
- KIDS PLAY KITCHEN – 18 pieces, accessories for this pretend play food set include sliceable…
- Encourage early learning of shapes, colors and counting with this cute cookie-themed game
- Helps build vocabulary and sensory motor skills, too
- What You Get – Total 25 sheets (11 x 8.3 inches). 4 designs. Includes 12 background sheets, 12…
- Gingerbread House Stickers – You could build yourself a cardboard Ginger bread house and use the…
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!
More Gingerbread Activity Ideas
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.
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