Gingerbread Baby activities and lesson plan ideas

Our Gingerbread Baby Activities are now digital for distance learning with editable teaching slides and worksheets based on Jan Brett’s book. Read aloud the picture book then use the printables or go paperless with Google or Seesaw to practice standards-based skills.

THIS READING UNIT FOCUSES ON USING THE MENTOR TEXT TO TEACH:

◼️ READING STRATEGIES

☐ making inferences

☐ summarizing and retelling

☐ analyzing setting

☐ analyzing illustrations

☐ plot | problem and solution

☐ sequencing

☐ cause and effect

☐ rhyme, rhythm and repetition

◼️ SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING TOPICS

☐ patience

☐ taking ownership

◼️ GRAMMAR & LANGUAGE CONCEPTS

☐ possessive nouns

☐ suffixes

☐ prepositions

☐ compound words

SUMMARY OF THE MENTOR TEXT:

In Jan Brett’s Gingerbread Baby, a young boy named Matti is baking a gingerbread boy with his mother. Matti is so excited that he opens the oven too early and out jumps a gingerbread baby! Matti’s mother and father start to chase after the Gingerbread Baby. Soon, the whole village is trying to catch the Gingerbread Baby. Meanwhile, Matti is at home baking again. 

The Gingerbread Baby runs through the village into a clearing where he sees a gingerbread house just his size. He runs inside the house and when everyone catches up, the Gingerbread Baby has disappeared. When Matti’s parents return home to tell him they couldn’t catch the cookie, Matti is holding the gingerbread house and the Gingerbread Baby is happy living inside.

THIS COLLECTION OF ACTIVITIES and LESSON IDEAS INCLUDES:

➜ Comprehension Questions categorized by reading strategy; text-dependent
➜ Social-Emotional Learning guidance lesson ideas & discussion topics based on the story
➜ Vocabulary Activities with kid-friendly definitions
➜ Grammar Topics selected to align with the text
➜ Focus Sentences use the book & author's craft as a mentor text to improve writing
➜ Lesson Planner summary, background info and planning space

➜ Story Mapping Printable identify character, setting, problem and solution

➜ Making Words Activity Page use any word from the book

➜ Focus Sentence copy work, identifying elements of the sentence, rewriting)

➜ Design a New Book Cover demonstrate understanding of the text by creating an illustration

➜ Predicting Activity primary-ruled and wider-ruled versions
➜ Summarizing Somebody → Wanted → But → Then → Finally

➜ Comparing and Contrasting using a Venn Diagram

➜ Cause and Effect analyze how events affect one another

➜ Visualization illustrate visualizations from the story and support thinking with text-based evidence

➜ Making Connections identify text-to-self, text-to-text, and text-to-world connections

➜ Thematic Writing Paper Use with the Writing Prompts... Makes a Great Bulletin Board

➜ 2 Sequencing Activities First → Next → Then → Last and Beginning → Middle → End

➜ 2 Vocabulary Activities Vocabulary Booklet and Word Mapping

➜ 2 Character Trait Activities listing traits and supporting traits with text-based evidence
➜ 30 Text-Based Writing Prompts 3 prompts for each of the following types of writing:

• narrative
• persuasive / opinion
• descriptive
• expository / informative
• creative / story writing
• procedure / how-to
• list-making
• letter / postcard writing
• poem
• book reviews

INCLUDED DIGITAL ACTIVITIES:

➜ 5 Teaching Slides to use for instruction (add questions, vocabulary, instructions, etc)

➜ 15 Student Pages for use in Google™️ Classroom or as editable files to create customized printables