Gingerbread-man-activity

The Gingerbread Man

This week, Swords and Snoodles has joined with some fellow bloggers to create five fairytale themed sensory blog posts. The five fairy tales were Little Red Riding Hood, Goldilocks and the three bears, Jack and the Beanstalk, The Three Little Pigs, and The Gingerbread man.

I chose to base my sensory blog post around the story of the Gingerbread man because my children are both obsessed with it, and they are very familiar with the story.

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I’m not really a sensory blogger, I usually just write about things that are on my mind or my heart, although I do make sure I do at least four sensory activities with my children each week. My fellow fairytale bloggers emphasise sensory tubs as their main item, which I think all looked absolutely amazing. My boys would have loved them. I haven’t done a sensory tub and there are various reasons for this. Sensory tubs don’t work well with my 2yo and my 4yo together – they have totally different personalities, one is beyond messy and the other is very neat and likes things in order. This means that sensory tub activities, as a pair, usually end up in screaming matches and full on wrestling, yet neither of them are behaving bad, they just have different approaches to exploring their world. For this main reason I decided to do a few activities based around the theme of The Gingerbread man.

Our first activity involved a sensory setup of The Gingerbread Man story. We used fake grass sample squares, aqua beads, Happyland figures & accessories, characters on sticks,and plastic animals. I then presented it to my boys. They loved it. They knew straight away what the story was, and they reenacted it several times. They explored this setup for 90 minutes.

story

For our next activity I decided to do a little science experiment with them. I asked them if they knew what would happen if the gingerbread man had fallen in the water. My 4yo said “He’d be all soggy and his head would crumble off!” I then presented them with a little experiment setup which involved three cups full of different textures/liquids. Cup one had fake snow, cup two had water, and a third cup had aqua beads. They absolutely loved dipping gingerbread men into the cups to explore the effect the contents had on them. As you can see in the pictures below they particularly enjoyed seeing The Gingerbread Man meet a watery fate!

experiment

For our third activity we did a simple Gingerbread Man and shapes hunt. My 2yo particularly loved this activity because he adores being messy. Needless to say, there was a snow blizzard in my kitchen. For this activity we literally used felt gingerbread men, and brightly coloured cardboard shapes, all buried in fake snow.

hunt

Our fourth, and final, activity ended the theme on a high. We baked gingerbread men biscuits! My boys love cooking, so this activity was a big success. They loved exploring the different textures of the flour, sugar, and spices. They enjoyed smelling the ground ginger and ground cinnamon. This activity was particularly helpful with my sensitive 4yo, it made him step out and become adventurous with smells and tastes. After we had pressed out the gingerbread men and popped them in the oven, the boys explored with some left over gingerbread dough. They loved creating shapes with it. Once the biscuits were cooked and cooled, the boys loved decorating them.

baking

We have loved being part of this fairytale blog share.

Please stop by and take a look at the work of the incredible people I have worked with this week:

The lovely Victoria from Silly Sparkles

The lovely Amy from Learning and Exploring Through Play

The lovely Emma from The Adventures of Adam

And last, but not least, the lovely Louise from Building Blocks and Acorns

 

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