Gingerbread Storytime

Christmas is quickly approaching and this week we read A Cookie for Santa by Stephanie Shaw which is about a gingerbread man.  To go along with our gingerbread book, we made no cook cinnamon ornaments.  The dough was really easy to make and smelled amazing.

I got the recipe here and it was really easy to make.  We altered the recipe a little bit to get a more gingerbread smell and it worked perfectly.
You'll need:

• 1 cup of flour
• 1/2 cup of salt
• 1/2 cup of cinnamon 
• 3/4 cup of very warm water 

(Note:  we 1/4 cup of cinnamon and 1/4 cup of clove to make the dough smell like gingerbread)

Throw all the ingredients in a bowl and start smooshing it around.  Before you know it, you have the most amazing smelling dough.
Roll the dough out and and cut with cookie cutters.  I gave the kids jewels to push into the dough to add a little sparkle.  Use a straw to make a hole at the top of the ornament for a ribbon.  It takes about 24 hours for the dough to fully harden.  I also did this craft with some older kids and we painted our ornaments with acrylic paint.  You can paint your ornaments before they're dry, which is nice because waiting is hard!