Gingerbread man Coloring Pages

Cookies Shaped Like People

The Gingerbread man is a Christmas cookie shaped like a person.
"Ginger" means しょうが in English.
They are baked with spices like ginger and cinnamon, so they have a sweet and spicy smell.
People decorate them with faces and buttons using icing, which is a white cream made of sugar.

The History of Ginger Sweets

Sweets made with ginger have been baked in Europe for a very long time.
It is said that Queen Elizabeth I of England had ginger sweets made to look like her important guests.
This is believed to be one of the ways that cookies shaped like people began.
Now, they are sweets that people hang on Christmas trees or give as presents during the Christmas season.

Gingerbread Houses

People sometimes make gingerbread houses out of gingerbread, too.
They make the walls and roofs with cookies, draw snow and icicles with icing, and decorate them with candies and gummies.
In places like Germany, it is a tradition to display gingerbread houses at Christmas time.
It might remind you of the candy house in the Brothers Grimm fairy tale, "Hansel and Gretel."

3 Coloring Pages

There are 3 coloring pages.
The first page shows a smiling Gingerbread man with his arms spread wide.
The second page shows three Gingerbread man friends holding hands in front of a gingerbread house.
The third page is a detailed coloring page with many shapes of cookies decorated with icing on a plate.
Try coloring lots of Christmas treats together with the cookie and Christmas cake coloring pages.

Let’s Make Them Together

You can make a Gingerbread man at home, too.
Roll the dough out thin, cut out the shapes with a person-shaped cutter, and bake them.
Once they are baked, try drawing eyes, mouths, and buttons with icing.
Even if you use the same cutter, drawing different faces will make every Gingerbread man unique.
Be sure to make them with a grown-up when using the oven.
When they are finished, give them as presents to your family and friends.

Layer brown colors for the cookies

Gingerbread is a nicely baked brown cookie.
If you color it with ocher first and then layer brown over it, it will look tasty with a freshly baked color.
If you make the edges a little darker, it will look like it just came out of the oven!

Leave the icing white

Leave the icing lines on the face and edges uncolored so they stay white.
The combination of the brown cookie and white icing is what makes a Gingerbread man look just right.
Color the buttons red or green, and color the bow tie in your favorite color!

Make the gingerbread house colorful

For the gingerbread house on the 2nd page, color the walls and roof brown. Then color the candy and gummy decorations in lots of different colors like red, yellow, pink, and green.
Leave the snow and icicles on the roof white, and add just a little light blue for the shadows to make it look pretty!

For the 3rd page, change colors for each cookie

For the cookies on the 3rd page, you can make them all brown, or you can use colorful icing.
It is fun to pick colors that match the shapes, like yellow for the star, green for the fir tree, and pink for the heart.
Try coloring the pattern on the edge of the plate carefully, too!

The plate and things around it

If you make the plate on the 3rd page white or light blue, the brown cookies will really stand out.
Try coloring the cinnamon stick reddish-brown and the star-shaped spice dark brown!

The story of the runaway cookie

In an English folktale, a baked Gingerbread man jumps right out of the oven and runs away!
He runs away from an old woman, an old man, and animals while saying, "Run, run, you can't catch me!"
Find out what happens at the end in a picture book!

The secret of icing

Icing is made by mixing powdered sugar with a little bit of egg white or water.
When it dries, it gets nice and hard, so the patterns drawn on the cookie won't break!
When you want to add colors, you mix in a little bit of food coloring.

Cookies to hang on the tree

If you bake cookies with a small hole in them, you can put a ribbon through and use them as tree decorations.
They are ornaments you can eat!

The power of ginger

Ginger is known as a food that warms up your body.
In many countries, people enjoy sweets and drinks made with ginger and spices during the cold winter.
The smell of gingerbread is also said to be the smell of European winter markets!