Gingerbread Man Patterning Activity

I have a love of gingerbread men. They look adorable as crafts and taste yummy as cookies. Nothing makes a house more like Christmas than a batch of homemade gingerbread men baking in the oven. With that said, I love this fun gingerbread man patterning activity that we did the other day.

All you need to create your own gingerbread man patterning activity is:

• 2 gingerbread men cut outs
• Jewels, buttons, colorful paper or fabric scraps, etc.

I was able to reuse gingerbread men that I created for Bree’s gingerbread birthday party.  However, you can easily print off a gingerbread man coloring page or create your own gingerbread man outline for this activity.

Simply place a bowl of brightly colored jewels and your gingerbread men next to each other on the table. Invite your toddler to create fun patterns with the buttons on the gingerbread men.  Patterning is a great way to introduce math to your little one.  Plus when working with tiny objects like these jewels, you will be helping to developed their fine motor skills as well.

Here are a few different ways to use this simple patterning activity:

1. Create a colorful pattern on one gingerbread man and have your toddler copy it on the other gingerbread man.
2. Invite your toddler to create a pattern and then recreate it yourself.  Kids love to have you mimic them:)
3. Work on color recognition and listening skills.  Ask them to find a ________(color) jewel and place it ______(below, above, beside, etc) the ________(color) jewel.
4. Work on simple math skills.  Add 4 buttons, 2 eyes, etc.
5. Our jewels are 2 different sizes.  Add an extra patterning challenge by adding different size of jewels.  Color, size and number can make for an exciting challenge.

We had fun playing with our gingerbread men.  I would love to hear what you and your little ones are creating and learning together:)