Finding the perfect Christmas Preschool craft is easy when you look to the basics because you can make simple likes like this gingerbread playdough.

Playing with play dough and Gingerbread Men are a match made in Christmas activity heaven.

Christmas Preschool Craft

Here’s a quick and simple play dough activity for the kids to try – play dough gingerbread men!

It’s a great sensory experience with the scent of ginger, cinnamon and nutmeg, and the kids can let their imaginations go wild as they decorate the gingerbread people.

We’ve been having lots of fun this week making Christmas themed play dough using Christmas cookie cutters.

After we made Christmas trees, snowflakes and baubles, we thought it would be fun to try making some ginger bread men as well.

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Gingerbread Playdough

What better way to get festive this year than making Christmas gingerbread man. Unfortunately, these ones are not edible, but decorating these guys are just as fun.

Plus this gingerbread playdough smells like real cookies!

Gingerbread Playdough Recipe

We are going to use one of our popular playdough recipe for this craft, but adding a Christmas touch to it!

Supplies You Will Need To Make Gingerbread Playdough

Materials:

• 2 Cups of Flour
• 3 Tbsp of Oil
• 1/2 Cup of Salt
• 2 Tbsp Cream of Tartar
• 1 1/2 Cup Boiling Water
• 1 Tbsp Ground Cinnamon
• 1 tsp ground nutmeg
• 1 tsp ground ginger

How To Make This Gingerbread Playdough Recipe:

1. Pour 2 cups of  flour into a bowl along with all the spices.
2. Add 1/2 cup of salt.
3. Mix in 2 tbsp Cream of Tartar. (You can find this in the spice section of just about any grocery store.)
4. Add 2 tbsp of oil. For this recipe I used vegetable oil, but you can use any oil, and as long as it’s a kitchen oil, your playdough will be non-toxic and safe if a little one takes a tiny taste.  The sodium level is very high, so we don’t encourage this to double as a snack.
5. Pour in the boiling water. Be VERY careful because this makes the dough HOT!
6. Mix all the ingredients together until they form the dough. At this point, if you don’t want to add any food dye to your playdough, you’re finished!
7. After it’s cooled, to make several different colors of playdough, separate the dough into equal parts and roll it up into balls.
8. Now, punch out the middle of the ball to leave a little bowl for you to pour your gel food dye into.
9. Drip your gel dye into the bowls. This is a great time to mix dye colors if you want to make another color.
10. Knead the dough until the dye is thoroughly mixed. This is VERY messy! If you don’t want to stain your hands, use gloves, and make sure to put something down so you don’t stain your counter (like I did).

What I Did To Make This Gingerbread Playdough

I made a batch of our home made play dough and added cocoa powder to make it a lovely golden brown color. You could add brown food coloring instead of cocoa powder if that’s what you happen to have on hand.

I also added cinnamon, nutmeg and ground ginger which gave the play dough the most delicious aroma.

We rolled out our play dough, and got to work cutting out our gingerbread men with our cookie cutter.

We decorated our play dough gingerbread men with googly eyes, buttons and sequins.

You could use anything you like to decorate these cute gingerbread folk – colored scraps of paper, beads, play dough in different colors that has been rolled into balls for buttons, bottle tops, colored popsicle sticks or toothpicks.

Just use your imagination and have fun!

We created so many of these sweet little gingerbread men and each one was unique. I think the green sequined shoes on the little guy in the picture above would have to be my favorite!

More Play with Play Dough ideas

Here at Kids Activities Blog we LOVE play dough!

We have play with play dough many ways like this Christmas preschool craft:

15 Amazing Edible Playdough Recipes: these play dough recipes are especially fun, because they’re totally edible!

Easy Play Dough Recipe: new to making homemade play dough? Then try out this simple high quality recipe.

Melted Ice Cream Play Dough for Kids: ready to make play dough that smells just like ice cream? Let’s do it!

Candy Cane Play Dough: make some Christmas inspired play dough with this magical candy cane play dough recipe!

For more play dough recipes please click here.

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