gingerbread men round 2

This year the children whipped up their own puffy paint to paint their gingerbread men and/or houses with. After reading more than a dozen recipes for diy puffy paint I came to the conclusion that the ratios did not need to be exact and that all you needed was salt, flour, baking soda, and a little water (plus liquid water color).

 

We mixed up our paint at circle time. Each kiddo was given a small container and spoon on one of our white plates (I LOVE these plates). Then I talked about the paint we were going to make and how it was a recipe. We've been working on recipes almost every week. The children took turns scooping out their desired amounts of the ingredients and got to mixing.

There were a lot of comments when the children found their paint to be too thick or too thin. After a little experimenting they each came up with their perfect pot of paint.

 

I poured the paint into small squeeze bottle that made it difficult for the children to get all squeeze happy. They really had to work those squeezing muscles!  Even though they each mixed up their own color we talked about sharing the paint with the rest of the class and how we could accomplish that through kind words and questions.

 

While I love the idea of using real candy to decorate their cardboard people and houses (like we did last year) I wanted for them to make something that could possibly be kept without attracting critters. To remedy this I spent one television program using various paper punches and a paper pad of holiday paper from Michael's to punch out circles, stars, and hearts of various sizes.

 

 

The children delighted in their creations and use oodles of thinking skills when they realized their paint would not puff up when we cooked it  (pop into microwave and cook for 20 seconds or so)if it was covered in paper. I loved seeing and listening to their collaborations and discoveries. Some layered circles and told me it was like "Disky" back from when we did our Kandinsky study, while others talked about shapes, size variations, and practiced their one to one correspondence with one paper shape to each blob of paint that they then counted out.

I mean, lookie how happy these creations are (blurry photos and all)! I used a template the mister made for me last year. I need to transfer to the computer so you all can have a copy if ya like.

Also, the clean up was so pretty I had to take a picture of it as well. We kept the paint out and available for the day. Oh my goodness! I just realized the sticky bottles of paint are in a zip bag somewhere in the casa...where did I put them?  I better find them before they get super ickified! Yikes! Enjoy!

watercolor gingerbread men

 

How could I forget our watercolor gingerbread men? The children loved drawing and scribbling with the oil pastels. I love how the liquid watercolor really covered their people, splotches and all! I used our cardboard gingerbread person as a template and fancy-pants watercolor paper. I traced the outline with an oil pastel and then cut out the gingerbread person once the paint dried. We looked at the pictures in Gingerbread baby and talked about our facial features as we painted. Here are two of our people. Aren't they fun?

on sorting and set ups...

I teach threes in a literature based school. We focus on one book for the week, pulling out theme and curriculum ideas from the book. No matter the theme, I will always have one or two sorting activities out along with fine motor fun, our sticky easel, maybe a felt board, a story basket, the mystery bag, a sensory bin, play dough, and art stuffs. Repeating these projects and actions using different materials is a great way for children to learn and stretch their growing minds and fine motor skills. The success and anticipation of knowing how to use the materials builds their confidence and autonomy while allowing for creative play when they engage with the materials in ways of their own choosing. Each time they succeed or stretch those thought processes connections are made in the brain. It's really cool! So whether or not the children put the correct amount of pom-poms on the corresponding gingerbread person there is still development happening. If the children color sort the poms (like one did in the picture) while another simply throws them all in the air, that's okay, the brain is still working and growing and the child is learning about the world around them.

 

The pretty set ups in my classroom are to engage and invite the children in and create a pleasing environment for myself and their parents. The set up is the photo-sell of a classroom but the real magic happens when the children arrive and create new ways of playing and manipulating their environment. Those photos don't really show the magic but it is there in super leaps and bounds. It is the main reason I work with children, that magical moment of learning that happens when nothing seems to be happening at all.

These gingerbread people were picked up from the dollar section at Target. I'm not a big foam fan but thought these could last a few years. There are numbered dots on one side with the number written on the other. One of my children immediately ripped a leg off of poor number six. After we discussed what was suitable for tearing, we figured out a way to repair the leg and then grabbed some tin foil and construction paper  to create a tearing station. For the sorting pieces you could use pom-poms, stickers, punched pieces, small counters, beans, or even wrapped candies though with a room of three-year olds you may find one hiding out in the gingerbread house with their cheeks full of peppermints...ahem.

sorting gingerbread people

 When we go with a theme for the week, we GO with a theme. Our week of gingerbread touched on all areas of our curriculum. We painted, we mixed, we did experiments, we read stories, we told stories, we played out the story, we sang songs, and we sorted. I picked up these fantastic gingerbread people from etsy seller How We Learn at Home. I didn't have a plan but loved them so I put them out on the tray. I then rediscovered a color carton made by my co-teacher and loved how they matched so I put it out as well. I walked away and began setting up other areas...

When I made my way back around the room with camera in hand, I found this! I love it when they do this. I thought for sure the people would end up all over the place but there they remained nestled in their colors, occasionally dumped and resorted, or put to bed as one of the children kept saying.

gingerbread houses and people

The children got an opportunity to explore a recipe. I wrote out a recipe card using drawings and explained the different tools we would be using. Mixing cups, measuring spoons, and ingredients were discussed. Our goal was to make puffy paint and so we did!

Each child got a cardboard cutout of a house and a gingerbread person and go to squeezing their designs. The challenge in this project was to NOT squeeze to much as the paint was pretty sloopy and too much paint would prevent our house and people from being "baked" in our microwave.

 

We used this recipe now pinned to pinterest and the children added a dash of cinnamon and spice as well. Once they were ready we popped 'em in the microwave for 30 seconds to cook/puff the paint.

 

 

Once their houses and people were dry (the next day) we got our our squeezy glue bottles and added candy accoutrements.

 

Good enough to eat! Which did happen when a younger sibling spied upon a becandied house. We later discovered it minus a skittle or two.

more gingerbread man fun

Our week of Gingerbread Baby was full of sugar and spice and everything nice. Take a lookise:

 We painted in gingerbread colors. A little gold, a lot of brown with a dash of pink and red....

 Our Gingerbread Felt Person got a lot of makeovers. He even took to hiding in the clasroom and at one point became a pirate. Aaargh!

Our gingerbread spice cloud dough got a lot of play! More and more spice was added throughout the day with some extra bits of glitter and flash. Even the clean up was loads of fun for the children. It helps to have a wee sized broom and dustpan.