Gingerbread Man Coloring Page
About This Coloring Page
A gingerbread man is the simplest picture of a person there is: a head, two arms, two legs, a face and some buttons. That is why it suits the youngest children. Pointing to the arms and legs on the page and then on themselves is body vocabulary, and the drawing is plain enough that nothing gets in the way.
The icing is the fine-motor part. The wavy lines at the wrists and ankles are the same up-and-down movement as early handwriting strokes, and tracing over them with a crayon before colouring is a warm-up that does not feel like one. The buttons are small circles — three chances to stay inside a tiny edge.
The candy canes beside him are stripes taking turns, a pattern a child can finish with two crayons. And the whole page comes with a story most children already know the refrain of, so colouring it tends to come with a retelling, which is the best kind of language practice because nobody asked for it.
Skills Practiced
How to Use This Coloring Page
- Point to arms, legs and head — on him, then on you. Body words stick when a child finds them in two places.
- Trace the wavy icing with a crayon first. Up, down, up, down. It is the same stroke as the letters m, n and w.
- Stripe the candy canes in two colours. One, then the other, all the way round the hook. The pattern tells them what comes next.