Students learn through gingerbread exchange

Sarah Baugh’s and Justine Snyder’s Oley Valley Elementary School kindergarten classes kicked off December by creating baked gingerbread boys and girls for more than 40 schools across the United States as part of the social studies curriculum. As a group, both classes wrote letters about Oley Valley, what they were learning, and how the weather was, and mailed them with the gingerbread. Throughout the month, each class received 20 different gingerbread items with corresponding letters telling them about different states and schools in the United States. Some favorites included a “Pete the Cat” gingerbread from South Dakota and Tennessee and a “Kentucky Derby” gingerbread from Kentucky. They also received a baseball-themed gingerbread boy from Illinois. The class enjoyed learning about states that included Hawaii and its volcanoes and Alaska where students play outside in -10-degree weather. Each day the class located the schools on a big U.S. map and colored in the states on individual gingerbread maps. They learned, in a creative way, that schools around the U.S. are very different!