Christmas is a time for food, cooking and families. What nicer thing to cook with the children than gingerbread men (or women). Or just to let the younger ones decorate. Not only does gingerbread taste so good, but it smells so good too – and is so typically Christmassy.With this in mind I thought that it would be wholly appropriate to make a Gingerbread person as part of the Christmas TRH Advent Book Calendar.
I’m all for recycling so you may have noticed that the inside of a roll of wrapping paper (which many an elf may have left behind) is the same colour as that of a toilet roll holder (TRH)! So we simply used a plain TRH and some of the inner of wrapping paper roll and cut out a head, arms and legs. For the icing we just simply glued on some white paper. I used sticky eyes – but you could draw them on, use googly eyes, print some on plain paper – the possibilities are great. Again there are lots of ways you could make the mouth put we used red crepe paper – which we also utilised to make a bow (we decided on a girl so put it in her hair, but you could make a boy and put it as a dickie bow) and buttons. We again used the crepe paper for the buttons but you could use buttons, gems, stickers, glitter blue, paint – all manner of things. We simply then glued it all together (we secured the arms and legs with a bit of tape).
This craft would go wonderfully with the Classic Gingerbread story but we decided to go for the new The Weasel Puffin Unicorn Baboon Pig Lobster Race by James Thorp and Angus Mackinnon ,as the gingerbread man is running as fast as he can, like in a race. This story is about a race where all the animals try to cheat – apart from the Unicorn. And everyone loves Unicorns right!
I was always going to love this book wasn’t I – I mean it starts “one pinky morning.”
I believe that my boys are encouraged to read more by something they find interesting and/or funny – this book is both! Straight away the illustrations are hilarious – for example with the pig wearing goggles and a snorkel! Some of the ideas are just crazy – I just hope that the boys do not try to see if they can use scrambled egg for glue now!!
I do like how this book is suitable for the whole family – there are lots to keep my youngest’s attention; it has the right number of words on the page, separated by great pictures to discuss for my 6 year old; it has great use of language, rhyming couplets, and imagination for my 10 year old – and it’s bonkers enough to be truly enjoyable for the rest of us.
The boys really enjoyed this book and now want to put custard on our trampoline!
And who won the race? You will have to read it to find out – but I think you already know the answer, because it would not be good story if it did not have a moral to it now would it.
Published by Digital Leaf 56 pp, hardback RRP: £10.99/US$17.95
ISBN: 9781909428027
I received a sample of copy of The Weasel Puffin Unicorn Baboon Pig Lobster Race in order to review it. All words and opinions are my own.