Video Transcript

Hi, my name is Laura Eldredge, I'm an early childhood educator and co-creator of The SEEDS Network. Today, I'm going to talk about how to make some gingerbread man crafts for preschoolers. And I'll show you two different things, and the first one is going to involve homemade gingerbread play dough. And you can make this very simply with a lot of things that you might already have, either in your house or in your school kitchen. And basically, first, you're going to mix together all of the dry ingredients. Which is two cups of flour, one cup of salt, two tablespoons of cream of tartar, one tablespoon of ground ginger, or maybe pumpkin spice. And then, two tablespoons of ground cinnamon. And those two spices at the end, will give your gingerbread play dough it's brown color. So, mixing all the dry ingredients together. Then, you'll take one and a half cups of boiling water, and two tablespoons of vegetable oil. And then, you'll continue to mix that around, until that's all mixed together. And when it's cool enough for the touch, then you're going to roll it out onto a floured surface and really knead the dough through. And this is where you can involve the children, they'll love to try and mix these ingredients together, to get it to look like play dough. So, I'm going to put that one aside, and take out some gingerbread play that I've already have made. And it has a wonderful smell, so it's like they're playing with real gingerbread dough. You can give them rolling pins, and some gingerbread shaped cookie cutters that they can use, to cut out their gingerbread man shape. Or, they can try to make a gingerbread man themselves, making some circles and pressing them together. And making their own legs and arms. And then, the really neat thing is, to able to give them some materials that they can actually use to decorate their gingerbread man. So, you can use some pipe cleaners, you can use some buttons to give your gingerbread man some buttons. You can actually, even use whole cloves for an extra sensory experience. Because cloves have a really strong smell, and they could use those even for the eyes and the nose. And so, they can play with this all they want to. And when they're ready for it to be a craft, they can set it out for a few days and let it dry. And then, they will have their solid gingerbread man to play with. So, that's the first craft. The next gingerbread man they can make, is made out of paper. So, you could either draw, or print a template of a gingerbread man shape. And have your child fully paint it with some brown paint. And then, again to add that wonderful scent of cinnamon or ginger. You can allow them to have the spice and then, sprinkle it on, on top, while the paint is still wet. Once it's dry, you can cut around it and attach it to a piece of card stock or construction paper, to give it a little bit more weight to it. Give them some googly eyes and buttons, some pipe cleaners and some tacky glue. And let them decorate their gingerbread man. And so, that's our second gingerbread man craft. I hope you enjoyed it, thanks for tuning in. For more ideas and resources for early childhood educators, check us out at TheSeedsNetwork.com.