Button Sorting

I put out an ice cube tray and a bowl of buttons. At first R just put them into the ice cube tray, but once I started to discuss the colours of the buttons, he began to sort them into different colours groups.

This activity required a lot of supervision due to the small size of the buttons. My son is not prone to putting things into his mouth, but you never know...

Gingerbread Man Collage

Together, we made a gingerbread man from various craft materials. 

You will need:

• Gingerbread cutout. I folded a piece of paper in half and drew the picture that I wanted, then cut it out and traced it onto a cereal box.
• Brown pencils, crayons, pastels.
• Powdered Ginger - I used cinnamon because I ran out of ginger making the cookies.
• Glue
• Buttons - can use real buttons. I used some card cut with a circle punch, then punched 2 tiny holes in it to make the holes in the buttons. R chose the colour of the button.
• A piece of red paper (I used quilling paper) for the mouth.
• Wiggly eyes.

First, I gave R the pencils and crayons on brown and he drew on the cutout. This didn't last long, because he really wanted to get to the glue.

Then he used the glue to cover the gingerbread man cutout.

Followed by shaking the cinnamon (or ginger if you have it) onto the "man" as he was called by R. The holes in my cinnamon shaker were a bit too big and the cinnamon came out really fast. Shake the man to spread the cinnamon over the glue.

Lastly, R glued again. I gave the directions to put the eyes and mouth on his head, and the buttons on his body. R chose where to place them.

R loved the 'man' and talked about him for many days.

The Gingerbread Man

Over the past week we have been reading the Gingerbread Man (I got a lift-the-flaps version from the library and it has been a big hit). We have done a few activities related to the book, which have been enjoyed.

Firstly, we cooked gingerbread men. These took us ages, but they have been eaten and asked for, for over a week. They have kept really well. Unfortunately, I didn't get any photos of this as we were cooking.

We made playdough and added ginger into it to create a sensory experience. I also gave R the gingerbread cookie cutters to use with the dough.

I made a gingerbread shape matching game from Preschool Printables which R did easily and lost interest in very quickly.

We made a gingerbread man with collage materials. I had intended this to be a follow-the-directions activity rather than a creative craft.

We did finger painting and I added some cinnamon to it for a bit of variety. R loves anything to do with getting messy and painting, so this was a very popular activity.

 

 We made cookies from collage materials.

Here we put buttons on the gingerbread man cutout. I said a colour and R had to find buttons of that colour, placing them on the gingerbread man.

We made the gingerbread man puzzle from The Gingerbread Baby Lapbook over at Homeschool Creations. Thank you for this great resource. R really surprised me with his ability to put this puzzle together, not having seen it completed before putting it together.

It was a fun week!