Shape Matching with Gingerbread Clay Christmas Shapes

As I’ve mentioned before, we love Christmas and all of its traditions in this house.  L is still very young, so this year is really the first year she has been able to participate in many of the traditions.  One thing I knew I wanted to do this year was make some ornaments to decorate our Christmas tree with L.  I found this recipe for Gingerbread Clay on Pinterest and decided to give it a try.  L loved it so much that I decided to make it again to use in a shape matching work.

After I made the clay, L helped me roll it out and used some of our Christmas cookie cutters to cut shapes out.  For the ones that we made into ornaments, we poked a hole in the top for string and painted them after they dried.  For the matching work, I put two of each shape into a bucket and put it on L’s shelf.  L was so excited when she found it there!  She quickly took all of the shapes out.  We named each shape and tried to find the other one that matched it.  L likes to put the matching shapes on top of each other — probably because that’s what we do with our Advent calendar work.  L loved every part of this project, and I think it’s neat that she was able to create the whole work for herself.  Plus it just smells like Christmas!