Fun with Gingerbread Houses

Happy New Year to you!  I hope you enjoyed a relaxing holiday with family and friends.  If you saw my last post, you know that I wanted to create gingerbread houses with my class as a winter break celebration.  I wasn’t quite sure how I was going to pull it off, but let me just say that I did and it was fantastic!

We started our last week before winter break by reading some great gingerbread boy books.  My kiddos completed many reading activities with these books:  beginning, middle, and end, compare/contrast, and designing gingerbread houses on paper.  We also watched a cute YouTube video by teachergehman called Annie Makes A Gingerbread House.

The students saved their milk cartons from breakfast and lunch.  Since we had a lot of indoor recess days, I had two students clean the boxes during that time.  I let the milk cartons air dry before stapling the top together.

I was really nervous about doing the gingerbread houses, so my oldest son and I made a couple at home one evening.  He really enjoyed it and created just a little mess.  My five year old was NOT interested.  Ha! 

I asked my parents to supply many of the items needed for the gingerbread houses.  Boy, did they come through for us!  There was everything from Andes mint candies to Fruit Loops.  I heard pros and cons about using frosting, but it worked great! 

I knew I really had to be organized.  I did not want frosting and candy everywhere.  To prepare, I laid out some bulletin board paper and taped it to the desks so it wouldn’t slide.  Each student got a bowl of all the treats that were brought in.  I had two volunteers in the classroom to assist.  I must say that I couldn’t have pulled it off SUCCESSFULLY without them.

My seconds were very meticulous about their gingerbread houses.  Would you believe that it wasn’t noisy at all?  They were so focused.

Some of the kiddos had traps, lasers, doors, and windows.  Check out that walkway made of M & M’s!

To transport the gingerbread houses we put them in a gallon sized Zip-loc bag and then a plastic shopping bag.  I hope they made it home safely.  I’ll ask when we go back on Monday. 

I will definitely do this again next year.  It was so fun and a nice ending to a busy week.  Have you made gingerbread houses in your classroom?  I would love to hear any tips or tricks you have.

 

       Backgrounds courtesy of Scrappin’ Doodles