Gingerbread Friends

Holy Cow!  My house is a mess!  But, all good teachers and moms know that that means only one thing: Today Was Awesome!  Another hint that today was so much fun is the fact that I took 84 pictures in 2 hours.  Yep.  Awesome.  Here are some highlights from Little Adventures Preschool theme day Gingerbread Friends. I promise I tried to only put the awesome pictures up.
We stared with C and T helping me make gingerbread scented finger paints.

 Combine in saucepan:

• 1/2 c. cornstarch
• 3 T. sugar
• 2 c. cold water
• 1 T. Cinnamon
• 1 T. Ginger
• 1 T. Cloves

Cook together until thickened.  The spices make it a brown color and it smells lovely!  If you decide to add some food coloring (and leave out the spices for a regular finger paint) just add a squirt of liquid dish detergent after cooking it and that helps the food coloring to not stain.  I don't add the detergent when I don't add food coloring (like today).

 Then we ground up some rice to make rice flour.

 And used our rice flour to make gingerbread scented play dough.
Knead together:

• 3 c flour (I use rice flour to accommodate gluten free kids in my class)
• 1 c water
• 1 c salt
• 1/3 c oil
• cinnamon
• ginger
• cloves

Once again, the spices color and scent the dough nicely.  I added a lot to make the smell rather strong, but start with 1 T of each and add more as you see fit.

 When everyone arrived we started with building a gingerbread man on the iPad (Starfall Gingerbread).  You could play the same game on the computer here: Starfall

 Next we picked 3 crayons (3 was the number of the day) and unwrapped them.

 We broke them into this silicone mold (previously sprayed with Pam) and added a mixture of cinnamon, cloves, and ginger.  Then we put it in the oven on 250* for 15 minutes.

 In the mean time we watched the book the Gingerbread Man and ate snack.

 Then we played with our gingerbread scented play dough (which went home in baggies to all the kids at the end of the day).

 EMan joined us for preschool today, he does that from time to time :)

 C built a snowman out of his play dough.

 Next we drew pictures of a gingerbread man.  I love how their drawing has improved!  I remember learning about families in the first couple of weeks of school (before I started blogging) and they were all scribbles with the occasional circle.  Everyone is now intentionally drawing shapes to make objects.  YAY!

 Then we pulled out the previously made finger paint and painted our gingerbread men.

 We also worked on our number 3 books by adding 3 stickers to each page.

 I love that "I" decided to put three "I's" on her number 3!

 Then we pulled out a gingerbread house printable from Homeschool Creations and pulled our crayons out of the freezer (after heating them up, stirring them together and cooling them off in the freezer they were ready).  The crayons smell great, but they didn't leave any sort of smell on the paper - oh well! 

 They loved playing with and coloring with their own homemade gingerbread crayons.

 Then we pulled out the parachute because we'd been at the kitchen table for the WHOLE DAY so far!

 And we practiced some lacing to calm everyone down at the end of the day.

It was a fantastic day!  I look forward to Lil' Learners tomorrow because we get to do more gingerbread activities!