Gingerbread Activities for Toddlers
By LAURIN BRAINARD Updated Feb. 9, 2024
Nothing makes it feel more like the Christmas season than digging into some fun gingerbread activities for toddlers! I love to break out all of our gingerbread themed lesson plans the week after Thanksgiving so we can stretch out all the holiday fun for as long as we can. If you want to fill this holiday season with hands-on fun for your little ones, then here are a few of our favorite activities!
Gingerbread Toddler Lessons
This Gingerbread Toddler Unit is made up of 10+ gingerbread activities you can use for the entire month of December:
- literacy and language activities
- sensory bins
- math activities
- fine motor activities
- art activities
Interested in downloading these gingerbread activities that you can print and use right away? Click on the image or button below to check them out in my TpT shop!
Gingerbread House Sensory Bin for Toddlers
My favorite way to introduce this gingerbread theme is through this Gingerbread Sensory Bin! Your little ones will love getting to dig their hands through their favorite sensory bin filler to find all the pieces to build their own gingerbread house. You can begin by selecting a building and laying it flat on the table outside the bin. Then, your little one can add all their favorite accents to their house.
Gingerbread Math Activitites for 2 to 3 Year Olds
Finding ways to hold our children’s attention during learning activities is so important! This fine motor math activity does just that! In this lesson, you just need some pom pom balls and gingerbread counting cards. Your child will count and match pom pom balls to the circles on each gingerbread man while counting. You can even add in some plastic tweezers for an extra challenge if your child has mastered their pincer grasp.
Puzzles to Teach Uppercase Letters to Toddlers
Toddlers need a lot of repetition when learning the names of letters. These gingerbread puzzles are a great tool for practicing the names of letters since they use their little hands to match each letter. As they match the letters, you can say the name of the letter and your child can repeat the letter.
Gingerbread Fine Motor Activities for Toddlers
Finding ways to build fine motor skills from a young age is crucial to building strength and control in the tiny hand muscles in little hands. These lacing cards will help your child’s fine motor skill development as they prepare to start writing in Kindergarten! If this is your child’s first time lacing, you may need to model how to put the lace through the hole with hand over hand movements.
If you aren’t familiar with what fine motor skills are, then you can read more about this here: What are Fine Motor Skills?]
Any time I break out the box of dot markers, my kids come running! There is just something magical that happens when a child presses a dot marker onto a paper! I love to use dot marker printables to work on fine motor hand control since our little ones think they are creating their latest mastermiece, but we know that they are also building hand control in their little hands.
Gingerbread Coloring Book for Toddlers
No gingerbread week is complete without some gingerbread cookies! In this book, your child will listen to you read all the steps to make some cookies. Then, they can color the pictures in the book.
I also love to pair this book with our favorite play dough recipe in this blog post: No Cook Christmas Playdough Recipe. Your kids can use this dough to “make cookies” for hours while they tough, see, and smell the dough!
Gingerbread Toddler Curriculum
If you want to bring some holiday fun centered around learning into your home this year, then this Gingerbread Toddler Unit is a perfect choice. It’s full of 10+ activities that will get your toddler excited about learning, all while working on their developmental needs.
If adding learning activities into your home this year sounds like something you would enjoy, then you can save money on this unit by purchasing it as part of my Holiday Toddler Curriculum. This holiday curriculum includes activities for Christmas, Gingerbread week, Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, Easter, Patriotic days, and Halloween! Your toddler or preschooler will be ready for Kindergarten before you know it! You can check it out here:
If you want to learn more about how to get started planning activities for your little ones, download my FREE guide for everything you need to know about the skill areas we incorporate into toddler school:
Here are some other blog posts to help you keep planning activities for your little ones:
- How to Plan Toddler Activities - The Complete Guide
- Winter Themed Toddler School Activities
- How to Set Up a Sensory Bin
- Salt Dough Christmas Ornaments
If you want to take a closer look at our favorite themes to use to teach toddlers, then check out this post: 40 Themes For Toddler Lessons and Activities
I hope these activities give you the tools to play and learn with your little ones all year long! Feel free to send me a message on Insta @theprimarybrain if you have any questions and I would love to chat about all things toddler learning with you!
This post may contain Amazon affiliate links. I earn a small commission each time someone makes a purchase through one of my affiliate links, which helps to support The Primary Brain blog. As always, I only recommend products that I love and all ideas shared are my own.
Written on February 9th, 2024 by Laurin Brainard