The Gingerbread Man (GBM) is almost back!  We are on Thanksgiving Break, so where did I spend part of my vacation?  In my classroom of course!!  I needed to get the GBM crate out of the closet without the kids seeing it. 🙂  Here’s what the underneath  area of my loft looks like now:

This is the crate where I organize all my GBM things.  Each country has a folder. 🙂

This “Unit Pack” folder holds all my Gingerbread Man Unit materials.  It’s really easy to pull out what I need from this folder to prep all the envelopes that the GBM leaves us.

Next in the crate is the Tale of the Gingerbread Man play that we have our K kiddos present each year.  We are taking the year off from this play this year because we have such a short window between Thanksgiving and the end of the semester.  We just didn’t have enough time to get everything together, so maybe next year. 🙂

I am usually in charge of running the sound board, reminding the kids of the movements, and turning the microphones on and off for speaking parts.  So you see all my markups in my master binder that I have with me during all of our practices and the actual presentation.

These are many of the GBM stories that I have collected. 🙂  In my GBM unit, I have shared a list of most of my GBM books. 🙂 You can also see the folders for each country.  I have all the materials I need for each packet in the folders.  You can get the letters in my GBM unit.

I also have a folder for all of the Literacy Work Station and Math Work Station materials we use during the GBM’s visit.

Behind all my folders, I have extra envelopes if I decide to add another country.  I like to add countries that my students have lived in so they can share some of their experiences. 
In the front of the crate, I have the more 3D objects that will be sent along with our letters.  I keep the menorah, dreidels, puzzles, etc., here.

And then there is the pile on top of the crate.  It serves two purposes, one to hide the envelopes underneath it, and two, its everything that would not fit in the crate or things I need to copy or have copied for the unit.

This is what our first envelope looks like. 🙂  It will be “delivered” on December 2nd.

We will be measuring with these candies soon and I’ll be posting this GBM Write the Room activity soon in my Tpt store. 🙂Finally, here are my GBM puppets that we use to retell the story.  We sit in a big circle and we pass the wooden spoon puppets around in the order that the GBM is chased in the story.  I got the faces years ago from the December Mailbox book.  I’m not sure if you can still get it, but I will be working on creating some to share. 🙂

Kristen 🙂