Gingerbread Man Lacing Craft

This week we have a gingerbread man lacing activity to share with you. It’s great fine motor practice and a perfect pre-sewing activity (we will be sharing a beginner hand-sewing project shortly)! We also had some fun decorating our gingerbread men afterwards.

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This activity is a part of the Virtual Book Club for kids. Feel free to join us in the Facebook group, and don’t forget to check out the bottom of this post for more gingerbread man themed activities. The featured book for this week is The Gingerbread Man by Jim Aylesworth.

Gingerbread Man Lacing Activity

Materials:

• Gingerbread Man Template
• Card stock OR thin cardboard (like a cereal box)
• Hole punch
• Yarn
• Tape
• scissors
• Optional: Crayons or markers
• Optional: Decorations like buttons, pom poms, googly eyes, etc.

Gingerbread Man Lacing Activity:

This is flexible based on what you have on hand.  You can print the template on white card stock and then color the body brown. Or you can print the template on brown card stock. I ran out of card stock so we used the template to trace onto cardboard from a cereal box to make the body.

After I cut out the body, I punched holes around the perimeter of the gingerbread man (use more or less to adjust difficulty).

To prepare the yarn, I cut a piece of yarn and wrapped some tape around the end to make it sturdy enough to push through the lacing holes.

Now it’s time for lacing! Big Bro is already familiar with lacing because of some Melissa & Doug Lace & Trace shapes we have, so he didn’t have too much difficulty with this, other than being reminded to go over and under. Once he got all the way around, we tied it off so we could keep it laced.

I just let Little Bro (2) lace it however he wanted to. He got a lot of practice simply poking the yarn through the holes and liked choosing whichever hole he wanted to go to next. He wasn’t very interested in lacing at the moment we did this activity, so I did it with him this time showing him how to do it. After Big Bro was finished, we moved on to decorating!

Decorate Your Gingerbread Man Craft

Next we decided to decorate our gingerbread men! There are pieces on the template that can be used to decorate the gingerbread man, by simply coloring and cutting them out. The boys used supplies from the craft bin. This included felt, buttons, beads, and crayons. Google eyes, pipe cleaners, and paint would be fun too!

Related: Learn Real Sewing with this Simple Kid-Sewn Gingerbread Man!

More Gingerbread Themed Activities:

Gingerbread Name Activity – Books and Giggles

Counting with Gingerbread Men – Powerful Mothering

Build a Gingerbread Boy Number Game – Toddler Approved

Yummy ABC Gingerbread Man Cookies- Growing Book by Book

Yummy Honey Gingerbread House Cookies Decorating – Preschool Powol Packets

Gingerbread Color Patterns from My Storytime Corner

Decorate a Gingerbread Man – Mama Smiles

Gingerbread Man Puppet Craft – Artsy Momma

Gingerbread Scavenger Hunt with Free Printables – Sunny Day Family