Book of the Week: "The Gingerbread Pirates."

Thanksgiving is Thursday and the stores are already decked out for Christmas.  That means December is right around the corner!  I have a few students who do not celebrate Christmas (or Hanukah for that matter).  Because of this, I tend to do a Gingerbread theme in December.  Some of the books I have do have Christmas elements, so I don't necessarily use all of them with each group.

To kick off the Gingerbread theme, and to join up with Lauren's Linky Party at Busy Bee Speech, I'm sharing my Book of the Week a little early (since I won't actually be using this book in therapy for a couple of weeks).  One of my favorite variations of the Gingerbread Man stories is "The Gingerbread Pirates" by Matt Tavares.

In this story, a boy and his mom bake cookies for Santa.  (If you do have kids who do cannot participate in Christmas activities, this book may  not be the best choice.).  The boy, Jim, makes a pirate crew and wants to save "Captain Cookie" and some of his mates.  The book tells of the adventure of Captain Cookie, who is trying to save the rest of his crew from being eaten by Santa, the cannibal.

The book definitely has some higher level vocabulary, including:  cutlass (sword), cannibal, prison, cliff, astonish, wounded, glittered, mantle, etc.  You can simplify it for the little ones, or expand on the vocabulary with the older students.

To accompany the book, I've created this open-ended game board:

I've also created some WH- question cards (2 pages) related to "The Gingerbread Pirates."

You can download both activities from my TPT store.  The graphics for both activities are by Scrappin Doodles.

Hope you like them!