One thing on my list of fun Christmas projects to do with my kids this year was to make gingerbread houses. I decided that we would use graham crackers, store-bought icing, and candy to make them because making real gingerbread seemed like a little more work than I was prepared to do this year.
My children had a lot of fun and making the houses kept their attention for quite a long time. The results have been fun to have displayed in our home.
Building the houses required just a little prep work beforehand.
First, I covered some cardboard with aluminum foil and taped it to the back.
I also hot glued three of the houses together for my youngest children, but my oldest two children wanted to see if they could use icing to put their houses together.
Each house took 6 graham crackers and they were far from perfect. However, it really didn’t matter because the kids used a ton of icing to fill in any holes.
I cut the tops of two graham crackers to look like a triangle at the top. Then I got glued two full graham crackers on their sides to the cut pieces. I finished the houses by using two full graham crackers for the roof.
We divided the candy so that each of the kids had the same amount of gum drops (2 kinds), licorice, peppermint candies, red hots, and Jolly Ranchers. You should have seen their eyes when they saw all of that candy. Too bad their mom only let them eat 2 pieces each. 🙂
After several attempts by my oldest two kids to construct a house, they broke down and asked me to make houses for them. You see, the store bought icing simply wasn’t stiff enough to keep their houses together. It was a shame because they had some pretty cool designs.
My 5 and 8 year old boys really got into decorating their houses. They worked so hard to make them look “just so”.
I put my 20 month old in her high chair and spread some icing on her house. After showing her with one piece of candy what to do, she started putting candy on her house.
I couldn’t believe how well she did with this. We all took turns helping her, and it didn’t even matter that she needed a bath when we were finished because she was having so much fun in the process.
I think the gingerbread houses turned out pretty well. Apparently there was a blizzard in the area which accounts for all of the “snow” everywhere. 🙂
We did learn a little lesson in engineering during this process. A couple of days after making the houses, two of them had their roof slide off on one side and buckle under the weight of the candy on the other.
Even so, we are still enjoying having them on display.
Did you make a gingerbread house this year?
