How Do You Eat Your Gingerbread Man?

📝 This post, How Do You Eat Your Gingerbread Man, was originally published in 2014 and has been updated with new information and resources.

I was never really a fan of gingerbread cookies growing up. We didn’t really have them around the house, and they were not part of our holiday celebrations. I did, however, become a fan of them when I became a teacher and needed an easy, interactive activity for Grandparents’ Day at School.

Days like Grandparents’ Day are tricky as a teacher. On one hand, you need to have the morning planned out so everyone knows just what to do and when to do it. You also have to be flexible because not all visitors will be in your classroom at the same time, as they may be with other siblings. And, the activities need to be fun, educational, and festive all at once. Wow, that is a tall order.

Over the years, this became my go-to Grandparents’ Day activity because it is flexible, festive, educational, and easy to manage with visitors coming and going throughout the morning. That is how How Do You Eat Your Gingerbread Man? came to be! I also made the Gingerbread Man Printable free, so you can pull it out year after year during the holiday season and enjoy it with your students.

Students LOVE this activity because it combines cookies, prediction, graphing, and just a little self-control!

What Students Learn from How Do You Eat Your Gingerbread Man?

There is a lot of learning that happens with this activity. Below are just a few skills practiced during this lesson.

✔️ making and counting tally marks
✔️ collecting data
✔️ interpreting data
✔️ patience and self-control
✔️ following directions
✔️ Creating and interpreting a bar graph with the updated version of Gingerbread activity

BEFORE Eating the Gingerbread Man

Wait! Do not eat! Do not pass Go! Tell your students that you are going to give them a gingerbread cookie, but they cannot eat it until you say so, and when you say so, they can only take one bite!

Give students their cookie, have them take a bite, then put the rest of their cookie down and hands off!

Note: I have baked my own gingerbread cookies for this activity, but I usually cheat and get the Pepperidge Farm Gingerman Cookies, which you can usually find at your local grocery store around the holidays.

Sharing Your Bite

So everyone has taken a bite, and their cookie is in front of them waiting to be eaten. Ask the group, “What part did you bite off first?” Have students raise their hand if they bit the arm first, head first, or leg first.

Collecting the Data

Print the FREE How Do You Eat Your Gingerbread Cookie Data Collection Page and hang it on the board. Enlarge it if you like! Have students come to the board and place a tally in the column corresponding to their first bite.

Analyzing the Data

Have your students grab the rest of their cookies and gather around the chart. Count the number of tallies in each column and record it on the page. Then discuss the results. Ask questions about the data, such as:

“How many kids ate the head first?”
“How many kids ate an arm first?”
“How many kids ate a leg first?”
“What body part was eaten first the most? The least? The same number of times?”
“How many more (or fewer)times did students eat the head/leg/arm than head/leg/arm?”