Math - On the Trail of the Gingerbread Man

You will need:

• 1 long piece of butcher paper
• Various scraps of paper
• Various materials such as dried grass, leaves, etc.
• 1 five-inch string per child
• 1 box of crayons and/or markers
• Latex gloves

What to do:

• Explain that the children will be making a map of the Gingerbread Man's travels. Talk about what a map is and what it tells us.
• Let the children decide where the map will begin and end, as well as what places and characters they'll need to include along the way.
• Tear scraps of colored paper to represent the characters.
• Have some children measure the distance between them and their strings as they are glued to the road. Others can glue the natural materials to the map to make it more interesting, or they can make sounds of the various animals and people as the story is retold (although everyone who wants to should participate in reciting the chorus).

Open-ended Questions:

• How could the Gingerbread Man have crossed the river if the fox had not offered him a ride?

Variations/Extensions:

• Have the children draw the characters to be glued on to the map, or let them cut or tear out reproductions of the pictures from the book.
• Put lines on the floor to mark the beginning and end of the map, and have the children be the characters.
• Cut the fingers from a pair of gloves and have children draw faces on them to make finger puppets that can be moved along on the newly created map.

Related Resources:

• Bring in road maps and maps of the neighborhood for the children to look at.
• Seven Candies for Kwanza by Andrea Davis
• Anno's Math Game by Mitsumasa Anno
• "A Wing on a Flea": A Book About Shapes by Ed Emberley

Suggested Benchmarks:

• Math - Demonstrate a beginning understanding of measurement using non-standard unites of measurement words.
• Language Arts - Show that print progresses from left to right.