The Gingerbread Man

On those last few days before Winter Break, we are all looking for those filler projects that will still bring joy to the students and ease to our day. After searching my blog roll I found one with drawing and painting a gingerbread. I will have to find my source and link it up, if you are my source please let me know. Anyways I luckily had two Gingerbread stories scanned into a PowerPoint. Jan Brett's Gingerbread Baby and an oldie but goodie The Gingerbread Man retold by Nancy Nolte and illustrated by Richard Scary. The kindergartner's had read The Gingerbread Baby with their teacher so I used this opportunity to show them there is more than one book out there written on the same story. I use Jan Brett's as a time filler, if I found I had extra time. We started with a brown piece of 9x12 construction paper and a black oil pastel. We discussed how my gingerbread man was peaking out from the side of the paper and we didn't need to draw his whole body. They quickly followed along as I drew the body of the gingerbread man and then added the details (buttons and scarf). We used oil pastels to color in the eyes, nose, mouth, buttons, and little squiggle of icing. Then we painted the scarf and background. The bright blue just helped the gingerbread man really pop. The students really loved this project and it took the whole time of my kindergarten students, which is 50 minutes. Throughout the week I heard my older kids complain that kindergarten had such a cool project.