Christmas Math Project for 3rd, 4th and 5th Grade: Run a Cookie Shop

You know the week. The decorations are up in the hallway, the class party is on the December calendar, and your students are already halfway to winter break in their heads. Every year I’d look at my plans for those last five days and think, “Who am I kidding?”

I didn’t want to fill the week with fluff, though. Those days still count, and plenty of students need the routine. What I wanted was something that felt like a break but still had real math in it.

So we opened a bakery.

In Making Dough: The Holiday Cookie Shop, your students become head bakers at Gingerbread Lane Bakery for one busy holiday week. They buy supplies, price cookies, fill orders, deal with a butter shortage, and close the books before break. Every day is a money decision, and every decision takes grade-level math.

A Holiday Cookie Shop math project sign next to a clipboard with a financial literacy project worksheet, a gingerbread cookie, and a mug of hot cocoa. — Christmas Math Project for 3rd, 4th and 5th Grade: Run a Cookie Shop 9

What you'll find on this page:

Why a cookie shop works the week before break

Kids already know what a cookie costs to buy. Most of them have never thought about what it costs to make. That gap is where the learning happens.

When a student finds out that one sack of flour covers 25 dozen cookies, they have to divide to find what one dozen uses. When the owner wants to charge $30 a dozen, they have to explain why customers would walk to the bakery down the street. The math has a reason to exist, and that is what keeps students working on it when attention is short.

It also covers financial literacy standards that are easy to skip during the year: income, expenses, profit, fixed and variable costs, and saving, spending, and giving. If you teach in Texas, these line up with the TEKS personal financial literacy strand for grades 3, 4, and 5.

And I didn’t water any of it down. Students still multiply, divide, and work with money at grade level. The holiday theme makes it approachable, and the work stays rigorous.

A week at Gingerbread Lane Bakery

The bakery sells four holiday cookies: Chocolate Chip, Peppermint Crinkles, Gingerbread People, and Sugar Cookie Stars. Each student keeps a Head Baker’s Journal for the week. Plan on 45 to 75 minutes a day.

Day 1: Stock the Bakery. Our supplier sells ingredients in packs, so students start by finding the cost of one: one dozen’s worth of flour, one egg, one stick of butter. Then they cost out each cookie on the menu. My favorite page is The Baker’s Special, where every student designs a holiday cookie from the decorating bar and figures out what it costs to make. They also decide which butter is the better deal, the box or the case.

Three printed worksheets for a Christmas math project on a wooden table, displayed alongside a rolling pin, cookie cutters, and gingerbread men.

Day 2: Price It. Now they set prices. Students find the profit on each cookie, then fill six customer orders at the owner’s prices. A note from the owner asks them to stay close to what other bakeries in town charge, so they have to defend a price, not just pick one.

A person in a holiday sweater uses a yellow pencil to complete a Set Your Prices worksheet, a holiday math activity with a table for cookie costs and profits, surrounded by baking tools and cookie cutters on a wooden table.

Day 3: Run the Bakery. Rent, the oven loan, cookie tins, delivery gas, and extra bakers on busy nights all go into a fixed-or-variable sort. Then students total the week’s expenses and decide where the bakery could cut a cost.

The Bakers Special worksheet sits on a wooden desk, surrounded by holiday math activities like cookie cutters, colored pencils, a ruler, and a mug of hot cocoa with marshmallows.

Day 4: The Holiday Rush. Supply shock! Butter prices jump, and the whole class works Event Card 1 together. Then each student draws one of the other seven cards (a snowstorm, a broken oven, a peppermint sale, a rush order for a cookie exchange, and more) and works out what it does to the week.

A wooden table features a Christmas math 4th grade event planning worksheet, a yellow pencil, a rolling pin, a gingerbread man cookie cutter, a mug of hot cocoa, and four cards labeled Cookie Exchange Order, Snowstorm, Out of Icing, and Tin Price.

Day 5: Close the Books. Students find the week’s income, expenses, and profit, then split the profit into save, spend, and give. They finish with an Owner’s Report: a short note to the owner about how the week went and what they would change.

Every day ends with a Head Baker’s Decision in writing and a quick exit ticket with new numbers, so you can see who has it before break.

Holiday Cookie Shop financial literacy project for grades 3-5, featuring worksheets for setting prices, filling orders, and tracking profit for 4th grade Christmas math.

One bakery, three levels

Most classrooms I talk to have a wide range of math levels, and that range doesn’t shrink in December. So the cookie shop comes in three levels. Everyone runs the same bakery, sells the same cookies, and draws the same event cards. Only the numbers and the writing support change.

Here is the butter shortage at each level:

	Level A (3rd grade)	Level B (4th grade)	Level C (5th grade)
The event	A box of 4 sticks goes from $4.00 to $8.00	A box of 4 sticks goes from $5.00 to $6.00	A case of 16 sticks goes from $20.00 to $24.00
The math	800¢ ÷ 4 sticks	600¢ ÷ 4 sticks	$24.00 ÷ 16 sticks
Writing support	Sentence frames on every answer	Sentence starters on decisions	Claim + evidence

Level A works in cents and whole dollars, with multiplying and dividing within 100. Level B moves to dollars and cents and multi-digit multiplication. Level C adds decimals, two-digit divisors, 8¢ sales tax on every dollar, and a running-balance ledger.

Because the story is the same, you can teach each day’s lesson to the whole class, then let students work at their level. Partners at different levels can still compare notes about the same cookies. The covers say Level A, B, or C instead of a grade, so nobody’s journal announces where they are working.

A flyer for a holiday math project featuring event planning and pricing worksheets on a wooden surface with a cookie cutter and gingerbread man, perfect for week before winter break activities.

Tips for running it in your classroom

Place students with Day 1. Not sure who belongs in which level? Have students try a few rows of the Day 1 price list. If they’re dividing $4 by 4 comfortably, give them the next level up and see how it goes.
Print once, staple once. The journal pages are black and white and copy cleanly. Copy them as a packet so students carry one journal all week.
Cut the event cards ahead of time. Card stock helps if you want to reuse them next year. Keep Card 1 out of the draw pile, since the class works it together.
Lean into the job. Call them head bakers. Put a “Gingerbread Lane Bakery” sign on the door. If your school allows it, a plate of store-bought cookies on Day 5 makes closing the books feel like a celebration.
Use the exit tickets. Each one uses new numbers, so you’ll know who understands profit and who just copied a neighbor’s table.
Have a short day? The pacing chart in the teacher guide has an “if you’re short on time” note for every day, so the week still holds together if the class party lands on Thursday.

Grab the holiday cookie shop

If you want a fun week before break that’s still full of real math, the bakery is open. Each level includes the Head Baker’s Journal, an answer key with every answer worked out, 8 event cards, 5 exit tickets, and the teacher guide.