Kindergarten students at Wilson Elementary School made gingerbread houses from graham crackers, frosting, candy, and empty milk cartons this past week. Everything was edible except the empty milk cartons. Children and parents had fun frosting and decorating their houses.
Decorating the houses was the finale to a week of multiple learning projects. Students heard stories like "The Gingerbread Boy, "Gingerbread Baby", "The Stinky Cheese Man", and "Gingerbread Man." They compared the characters in the stories and created a Venn diagram showing which characters and events were common to all the stories and which independent of each other. In addition, children in one class took one bite out of their gingerbread cookie then graphed the results. The graph showed that 12 children took their first bite out of the head, 3 the leg, and 1 an arm.
The concept of symmetry is introduced in kindergarten. To illustrate a story, students drew gingerbread men that were symmetrical and colored them. Then, using their character cutouts from the various stories, the children could rearrange the characters and retell the story in small groups.
Kindergarten students are also just beginning to learn the concept of measuring. They used objects to describe the distance between the top of the gingerbread man's head and toes. Children arranged paper clips, M&M's and marshmallows on the gingerbread men. Students described the distance as 'my gingerbread boy is 10 paper clips long, or my gingerbread boy is 15 M&M's long.'