Dress the Gingerbread Man Game

I love to use dice with children.  We have a collection of large foam dice.  There is so much action in the rolling and counting process, not to mention the excitement and anticipation that comes with watching your roll evolve.  

Place out bowls of small art materials near some large gingerbread shapes.  Mine are simply construction paper and aren't even laminated (the materials tend to roll off the laminated ones).  We used pom poms, ribbon, yarn, jewels, mosaic squares and buttons.  

The children take turns rolling the die, counting the dots and then counting out that many pieces of "candy" decorations.  They then placed them on their cookies where ever they chose to.

This is a great activity to do on the floor where they children can get into the gross motor action of rolling a large die and move more freely.  When young children can move more they tend to stay engaged for a longer period of time.

This is a fun way to experience counting, one-one correspondence, getting acclimated to visually remember representations of numbers, turn taking and excellent fine motor practice as well.

All this while playing a fun game.  We play as long as we want as there is no ending.  There is not a "right" way to decorate your Gingerbread Man and it can have as much candy as you can load on it, so it is an extremely flexible game that does not cause competition issues.

This concept could also be applied to any shape or character.  Let me know what you come up with!