This is an activity that was created during covid times when we were teaching online.
The students always enjoy building and decorating gingerbread houses and this might still be a fun activity. Build a gingerbread house, train, or person using blocks and shapes on google slides and then decorate it. We had a lot of fun creating this activity and we thought that we can share it with you.
The activity includes 3d and 2d blocks and shapes that the students use to build their creations. They save it as a png when is ready and add it as a background to the next slide to decorate it. Students need to be familiar with google slides enough to be able to move, copy objects, and save background.
Some ideas of how to use the student’s creations and add more learning to this activity.
- The students can save their creations as a png with their names on it, and the teacher can decorate them in the virtual classroom or make a board with all of them.
- The students can use their creations to make virtual cards for friends and relatives by adding text. They can save them as png and send them by email.
- The students can write a story about their creation or describe it.
- They can list the candy on their creation by type, and write expressions, or problems. For example “How many blue and red jelly beans are on the roof”?
- They can write an addition, subtraction, multiplication, or division expression for each of the candy type that they used.
- They can compare the quantities of types of candy between their creation and a friend’s creation.
- They can make a graph to show how many of each type of candy they used for each shape. (house, train)
- The teacher can create a list of expressions for candy to be used. Example: Use 3×5 red jelly beans, use 2×5 gummy bears, and so on.
- The students can use ratios and fractions to express relations between the candy quantities.
Below is the google slides presentation to be used in edit mode.
Build a gingerbread house, castle, train…
If you would like something less complicated for the younger ones I have also created a “decorate” version where younger students use ready gingerbread shapes and just decorate them with candy. The ideas above can be used with this activity as well.
Decorate a virtual gingerbread house, tree, train, snowman…
Check out our digital holiday activity cards. (free versions included)
Winter Holidays Digital Activity cards grades 1/2
Winter Holidays Digital Activity cards – grades 3/4 and 5/6
Winter Holidays – Digital Division Activity cards starting with division grades 1,2,3
And some free winter holidays – games
Holidays Scavenger Hunt Game Multiplication facts
Holidays Scavenger Hunt-Game Challenge Multiples, prime numbers, square numbers
Holiday Scavenger Hunt Games – Addition/Subtraction/Place Value 1-100
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