Christmas Cookies Unit Study for Preschool, Kindergarten & Early Elementary

In this Christmas Cookies Unit Study, your younger kids will read a Christmas cookies book each day while helping you mix and bake cookies, make ornaments, and more!

December is a perfect time to learn about Christmas cookies in your homeschool while you bake some treats to share with your family, friends, and neighbors.

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This Christmas Cookie Unit Study for preschool, kindergartners, and early elementary kids covers reading, writing, math, history, community service, gross and fine motor skills, and much more, all while baking cookies this holiday season.

Resources for Your Christmas Cookies Unit Study

Required Books

If You Give a Mouse a Cookie by Laura Numeroff and the Christmas sequel, If You Take a Mouse to the Movies

Arthur’s Christmas Cookies by Lillian Hoban

The Gingerbread Man by Eric A. Kimmel

OR Richard Scarry’s The Gingerbread Man (Little Golden Book) by Richard Scarry

OR The Gingerbread Man by Jim Aylesworth (this is my kids’ favorite version, you can listen to a read aloud of it here)

Cranberry Christmas by Wende and Harry Devlin

Optional Books

A World of Cookies for Santa: Follow Santa’s Tasty Trip Around the World by M.E. Furman

The Baker’s Dozen: A Saint Nicholas Tale, with Bonus Cookie Recipe and Pattern for St. Nicholas Christmas Cookies

For a history lesson about the Great Depression and the true meaning of Christmas, read The Legend of the Christmas Cookie: Sharing the True Meaning of Christmas by Dandi Daley Mackall Also available on Hoopla

Christmas Cookie Day! by Tara Knudson A board book for your toddlers

Just for Fun: Glitter Decorate Christmas Cookies Sticker Activity Book by Dover

Activities for Your Christmas Cookies Unit Study

Read If You Give a Mouse a Cookie and If You Take A Mouse to the Movies by Laura Numeroff

Set up dominoes to demonstrate a chain reaction, like what happens in the story.

Have children write or narrate and illustrate their own version of “If you give ____ a Cookie” story. Use the printable in the Christmas Cookies Unit Study from the Free Resource Library.

Bake chocolate chip cookies or try these super-easy, gluten-free peanut butter cookies that only have three ingredients (peanut butter, sugar, and an egg).

Use chocolate chips as manipulatives for math problems. Use the Cookie Math worksheets in the Christmas Cookies Unit Study

Make “cookies in a jar” as a gift to give to friends and neighbors this holiday season. Here are 24 different cookie-in-a-jar ideas to choose from. Let your kids measure the ingredients to learn about fractions.

Play a game with these free printable Christmas cookie Tic Tac Toe from The Art Kit

Arthur’s Christmas Cookies

Read Arthur’s Christmas Cookies by Lillian Hoban (Note: this is not the “Arthur” from the popular cartoon, this is a classic book from the early 1970s, about a monkey named Arthur.)

This book is a beginning reader, let your child read it to a sibling, a pet, or even a stuffed animal.

Bake and decorate sugar cookies or make Christmas “cookie” style ornaments with applesauce and cinnamon. Get the full directions for the ornaments here.

Gingerbread Christmas Cookies

There are tons of variations of the gingerbread man story. Here are a couple of the best ones:

Richard Scarry’s The Gingerbread Man (Little Golden Book) by Richard Scarry

The Gingerbread Man by Jim Aylesworth (this is my kids’ favorite version)

Discuss where spices and molasses come from when making cookies. Watch this video about the spices in pumpkin spice (which are also used in gingerbead). Molasses is made in a way that’s similar to maple syrup, except sorghum cane is pressed for the juice, instead of tapping the maple tree for sap. You can watch this video that explains the process of making sorghum from planting the seeds to the finished product of sorghum molasses.

Your kids will enjoy playing with this fluffy gingerbread man playdough.

Bake and decorate gingerbread cookies using gingerbread boy and girl cookie cutters. I recommend this gingerbread cookie recipe from Sugar Spun Run. If you don’t have the time or resources for making gingerbread man cookies, go ahead and let your kiddos watch this video to see how they are made.

Using the printable gingerbread pattern in the Cookie Unit Study Printables in the Free Resource Library, have children make gift tags to use on your gifts this Christmas.

Learn how to draw a gingerbread man with these instructions.

Let your kiddos “read” their own free printable Gingerbread Man Easy Reader book.

Get your gingerbread bodies moving with this fun “Freeze” Gingerbread song from Jack Hartmann.

To extend the gingerbread fun, check out Gingerbread Friends or Gingerbread Baby, both by Jan Brett. You may want to also check out these Gingerbread Baby Activities to extend your study.

Cranberry Christmas Cookies

Read Cranberry Christmas by Wende and Harry Devlin

Discuss how cranberries grow in a bog. Watch this video that answers the question, “Do cranberries grow in water?” and this one that shows the traditional way that cranberries are harvested. Finally, see a few fellow homeschool kids try their hand at harvesting cranberries the “old-fashioned way with hand rakes”.

Bake Cranberry Cookies: you can use the recipe on back of the Cranberry Christmas book, or try my favorite, Frosted Cranberry Cookies.

This cranberry sensory bin will keep your kids entertained for (literally) hours.

There’s a Hallmark Christmas movie called Cranberry Christmas that is family-friendly that you and your kids may enjoy.