Disguise a Gingerbread Man Library Contest
One of the most fun partnerships of my job was working with our school librarian. We worked Family Literacy Nights, Read Across America Celebrations, and our fun library contests! The library contests came about as a way to reach our kids and parents and engage them in fun activities that they would enjoy. We wanted our kids and parents to:* love reading and love books.
* talk to each other about books.
* create something special together.
To do this, we invented our library contests! They were totally voluntary. One of our library contests that took place in December around the holiday season was Disguise a Gingerbread Man.
We hung posters around the school to let kids know we planned to host a contest focused on the gingerbread man story.
When students came to the library to ask about the contest, we provided a gingerbread man template on cardstock and the directions on a flyer. For this fun holiday season activity, we gave some cute ideas for different disguises that even a preschooler could do!
Disguise a Gingerbread Man Library Contest
The kids had about three weeks to disguise their gingerbread man, gingerbread girl, or gingerbread baby as a character from a book they enjoy. Students were encouraged to create their gingerbread person using different art supplies, including crayons, markers, construction paper, glue, puffy paint, scissors, and other crafty materials.
Then we had a couple of judges identify the winners! We chose many, many winners because the prize was a big one. We booked a bus and a field trip to Barnes & Noble!
Our original idea was to give the winners gift cards to Barnes & Noble, but we realized that our population of kids might not be able to find transportation to get there to spend their card. So my incredible principal suggested the field trip!
We collected winners from the three contests in the fall (Disguise-a-Pumpkin, Turkey in Disguise, and Disguise a Gingerbread Man) and took them all to Barnes & Noble!
They gave each child a piece of chocolate and a tiny sample of a frappuccino (I don’t have to tell you how fancy the kids thought that was!) and then the school paid for one book of the child’s choosing. It was a beautiful day!
To grab the editable version of these fun projects (and more: bunnies, snowmen, and designing bookmarks!) just head over to my TpT store!
I love this idea! I am doing this in my library for the first few weeks in December. I am so excited to see how they turn out.
Do you have a copy of the letter you sent home that you'd be willing to share?