Life-Size Gingerbread Kids Craft

Peppermint, hot chocolate, egg nog, gingerbread… some of the best flavors come out during the wintertime. My personal favorite from that list is definitely gingerbread! I seemed to have gingerbread on the brain this past week, because it inspired our latest craft.

With our Christmas shopping underway, we’ve have a lot of boxes kicking around the house. It occurred to me that cardboard looks an awful lot like gingerbread. YEP, I am definitely 7 months pregnant haha!

But really, we had this huge box that was perfect for me and the kids to make a gingerbread craft from 🙂

We decided life-size gingerbread kids would be super cool since I had big enough pieces! I will admit that this was a craft that went much smoother in my head LOL. It wasn’t a complicated activity, but we were just having one of those days.

The kids could not keep themselves from getting paint and glitter glue everywhere. At one point J even snuck the black sharpie and scribbled on the gingerbread girl’s face! Hence the addition of black hair haha.

Warning: these gingerbread kids are not for consumption

The goal isn’t to have Pinterest perfect crafts, it’s to enjoy the time spent with your kids and let them express themselves creatively. I do think it’s appropriate to have crafts that they follow instructions for and not just let them go willy nilly with paint on any and every surface they’re given.

The fact is they’re kids and it’s not worth getting upset when they don’t share your gingerbread family vision. Totally speaking to myself here, as I had to remind myself of this many times with this craft! SO, they don’t exactly look how I envisioned, but it was a fun idea and the kids love them!

One of my favorite parts of making these life-size gingerbreads has been all the fun we’ve had since making them! The kiddos always love a good craft, but seeing them dance around with their new buddies has been so cute. I don’t have a ton of pictures of them working on or playing with their creations this time.

As mentioned before, they got a little cray with the paints, so I had to keep a close eye on them. Then once we finished I could hardly get them to stand still long enough for a picture! Such is life — I prefer my little ones to be happy and dancing around anyway.

So here’s how we made our gingerbread craft:

1. Draw the gingerbread people

Find a large piece of unbent cardboard. If you haven’t finished Christmas shopping yet, check out my gift guide for creative kids. There are for sure some items on there that will come in big boxes, just sayin’! Then draw an outline of your gingerbread people on the backside.

I just googled a simple gingerbread design and drew them free hand based off the picture. I suggest drawing it in pen so you can easily go through and fix the shapes and dimensions. Once happy with a design, I outlined that one in black sharpie so it would stand out.

Also feel the need to point out that, much like my real life kids, our gingerbread kids did not want to cooperate for the first picture. So don’t mind the coffee mug holding them straight!

2. Set the people free!

To cut our friends out, I used an x-acto knife. They make cutting around small curves easy and give a smoother edge. This would be the point where my fiancé reminds everyone to cut on top of a safe and durable surface. He has found me cutting right on the rug or dining room table many times, and he is not a fan lol!

3. Get decorating

They painted a green dress on the girl, and used do-a-dot markers to make a polkadot suit for the boy! To keep them somewhat within boundaries, I placed painter’s tape at any edges I didn’t want them going past.

Then the kiddos went to town with the glitter glue. Afterwards, I added some classic gingerbread accents and drew on faces. For a final touch, we took some plaid material we had and made bows for them!

4. Enjoy your new gingerbread children

I seriously don’t know if the kids have ever been so excited about a craft AFTER we’re done making it. This time around they’ve had so much fun playing with these little guys! We have been blasting the Christmas tunes and dancing all around with them.

As with most of our creations, there are so many ways you can change this up! If we had sequins on hand, I would have definitely loved to add those. Also I think it would be cute to match the gingerbread kid to your own kids! If your child has red hair and glasses, adding those would be so fun.

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