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Christmas in Germany
Christmas in Germany: gingerbread cookies
We started off reading The Gingerbread Man and making gingerbread cookies. Actually, the first recipe I made wasn’t for cookies you can roll out, so we had to make two batches.
The kids “suffered” through more cookies (the final working recipe is the one I included in the printable from Jan Brett’s website, which again if you haven’t been there go spend a few days drooling over all the free printables she’s created.) And she’s got some awesome printables to go with her Gingerbread Baby books. That, and Jolanthe just put up earlier this week a whole slew of cool gingerbread activities, and apparently that’s her post today.
After making some cookies we put together our puppets and acted out the story.
Next, we went over to Jan Brett’s website again (can you tell how much I love it?) and went to her mural page and printed off the houses for my kids to create houses (and no that’s not a picture of my kids coloring houses, but I wanted a picture). I told them the story of Hansel and Gretel to go with this. Ahhhh, yes the nice gruesome Christmas tale of Hansel and Gretel. Oh, it’s not really Christmas is it?
Of course after we did that I saw this cool post of a paper bag foldable gingerbread house that is way too cute. Why does that always happen?
And we couldn’t learn about Germany without learning about Saint Nicholas and Saint Nicholas Day, my kids thought getting presents put in shoes was hilarious. I thought the fact that some kids try to use the biggest shoe they can find hilarious. And to go with it what a better way to learn than to watch the Veggietales version of ST. NICHOLAS
Christmas Around the World: Germany lapbook
For the tracing I created the words in word art so the kids could trace them.
To write through what’s on here. On the front and back covers: Germany word to trace, the Jan Brett gingerbread houses (the big huge one is Batman’s who decided Santa was visiting).
On the inside is the recipe, their puppets, a book on Saint Nicholas, and lift the flap book for St. Thomas Day (that’s the donkey). And all three kids had to draw what they wanted from Saint Nicholas. Which, as I recall was Iron Man toys, Blue Arrow costume, and something which I can’t remember or decipher from her picture. Oh, and I was quite proud of Batman for writing Saint Nicholas all on his own, of course I then had to find a creative way to glue it into the book…..
Click here to get the Christmas Around the World: Germany lapbook.
Now, head on over to Jolanthe’s website at Homeschool Creations and see the AWESOME gingerbread unit she’s put up and what everyone else is up to this week.
Comments
9 responses to “Christmas in Germany”
My daughter has been working/reading on gingerbread in her preschool too! We decided to make some dough to play with and then make into ornaments here at home (it's fun expanding on what she is doing at school.)
This post caught my eye with “Germany”. My parents lived there for about 16 months, over a year ago now, and I had the opportunity to go visit them during advent/Christmastime. It was neat seeing all their Christmas Markets and their traditions and how we've derived our traditions from them 🙂
Fun unit! I will share our “Christmas in Germany” next week, but I have to say from experience – it's really very close to Christmas here. The only real difference is Nicholaus, Christmas Markets and that presents are given on Christmas Eve. Sometimes Santa (or, rather, Kris Kringle) drops something special over Christmas Night to be found on Christmas morning.
What fun! Selena doesn't like vegie tales. The stories of Saint Nicholas always tends to remind me of my Christmases as a kid, not that we put out shoes for our gifts, but that we never had Santa, everything was done on Christmas Eve.
Looking at Natalie's comment – I hadn't realized opening presents on Christmas Eve was a German custom – maybe that's why we did it that whay when I was a kid…hmmm…I wish someone on that side of the family was still around to ask!
Jan Brett's website is amazing!
so neat…..I love it.
For church tomorrow during the children's class time, (since it's our Christmas pageant day at church) we will be experiencing Christmas around the world. I think it's neat to read about Christmas in other places. Good creative thinking T.
I love Jan Brett's website too!
I also love the idea of a Christmas around the world unit. I think I'm going to bookmark all of your posts and do this next year!!!
Ticia, I just shared this on https://freehomeschoolprintables.blogspot.com/ Have you got a button for your blog yet that I can add to the sidebar?
What a great unit you've prepared. Thanks for sharing it. I'll have to do Christmas around the world next year.
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