Gingerbread Town

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Home : 2007 : November : 10

Gingerbread Town
By MrChapp

I also made a gingerbread town to practice both map skills and economics. We would have a gingerbread town planning meeting and decide what businesses we NEED and what businesses we WANT. I usually shot for about five of
each. I had three different building patterns-- a basic house, a tall building for wants, and a short, long building for needs. Each student was responsible for one building or house.

They traced the patterns onto brown construction paper and decorated them with basic office supplies-- white reinforcements are frosting, bright garage sale stickers are gumdrops.

Then we'd

put the buildings on a bulletin board designed to look like a map-- all the businesses went on Main Street and the houses went on Gingerbread Lane or Peppermint Path. We made sure to include a map key and a compass rose.

I would do that at the start of our gingerbread unit, then base activities off of it. For example, when we wrote stories about where the gingerbread man ran, we included locations on our map. The students also made their own maps and we would practice writing directions on how to get from one place to another using cardinal directions.

I got a lot of this out of an older Mailbox magazine for primary grades. I don't remember what year, but if you search the archives on the website, you may be able to find info.