by Deirdre Gould

Created on: August 19, 2009

Anyone who has tried to build a gingerbread house with their children knows the real fun is in the decoration. The most frustrating part of building a gingerbread house is the actual construction. No matter how closely you follow icing instructions, evenly you roll the walls and roof, or long you hold the pieces together, most home cooks end up with a crooked or collapsed wall or roof. This project is designed to quickly get past the boring, patience testing construction of gingerbread houses to get to the good part! Perfect for preschool and elementary children, I have had great (albeit messy) success with this project in classrooms and girl scout meetings for years.

You will need:

1 milk carton per child (the single serving size they have for school lunch are perfect. In fact, most kids forget to save them no matter how many times you ask, so it's a good idea to enlist the cafeteria crew's help to get a few extra), make sure these are thoroughly rinsed out.

1 heavy duty paper plate per child

Graham Crackers, 3 per child (also good to have extras)

Confectioner sugar and access to water or milk (you can also add food coloring if you like)

Candy decorations of all sorts (necco wafers, skittles, licorice, small candy canes and gumdrops work very well but you are only limited to your imagination)

Popsicle sticks (one or two per child, these will be used to frost with. You can find large bags at your local craft store)

Either old newspapers, dropcloths and/or aprons, this project WILL get messy, but luckily it will all clean up with a little warm water

Now, it is perhaps cheating to use graham crackers instead of gingerbread, and you can roll out and bake gingerbread if you like, but the light weight and perfect size of a half graham cracker make this project really easy, and the whole point is to get to the decorating!

Make sure you cover all tabletops and rugs with newspaper or dropcloths or prepare to have some clean up (but that's part of the fun anyway). To make things easy, make one big pot of frosting for each table instead of individual pots for each child. You will need quite a bit of confectioner's sugar to each small amount of water or milk. Slowly add your liquid to the sugar and stir until you get a goopy, thick frosting, but not stiff. If you add too much liquid and it becomes runny, just add a little sugar. This can be done ahead of time, but make sure you tightly cover the frosting, as it will harden and dry out after a while

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>