Every third Saturday of the month, I am responsible for planning and presenting a family friendly, Children’s Program geared toward toddlers and preschoolers.

Given the season, I thought it might be nice to make gingerbread man ornaments. Decorating and baking real gingerbread men was out of the question given the fact my library is currently under renovation. So, I settled on scrapbook paper gingerbread man ornaments as an alternative.

I created a quick template for tracing purposes, and cut out a bunch of gingerbread men out of brown cardstock. I cut dozens of strips from sheets of various colored card stock using crinkle cut scissors. I gathered buttons, bells, pom-poms, ribbon and googly eyes and set up maker stations to facilitate attendees’ creativity and highlight the importance of process over product. My sample is shown sans bells.

Note: I was very careful to not show my sample gingerbread man, and to stress individual creativity. Unfortunately, I had some parents with control issues who were determined to “help” their children create perfect gingerbread men.

Monthly Children’s Program.

Storytime