Around the holidays, you’ll start to see those scrumptious-looking gingerbread house kits for sale. Kids are irresistibly attracted, and who can blame them? But if you’d rather keep things to a more manageable scale - and you want to sneak in some academic skills while you’re at it - try this adorable craft. It works great for one child at a time, and even better for a small group who’ll enjoy creating a village of sweet fun.
What You Need:
- 8 oz. milk carton (like the kind kids get in school lunches), empty, clean, and dry
- Can of cake frosting
- Blunt knife
- Graham crackers
- Spray can with decorator tips
- Assortment of candy…of course!
What to Do:
- Help your child take the milk carton and tape it securely shut.
- Have your child use the blunt knife to spread cake frosting on the entire surface of the milk carton. Break up the graham crackers—you’ll find that, at least for most brands, a half a graham cracker is almost a perfect fit on most surfaces of the carton. Stick a graham cracker on each surface of the carton.
- Now take out candy, and go to town! In particular, encourage your child to explore patterns—yet another application of math skills. Let’s say your bag of jellybeans comes with five colors. Challenge your child: can he create a pattern that uses all of them? Other items, such as hard peppermint candies, offer great practice with shapes and sizes. And let’s not forget things like pretzel sticks, which can stack up to make adorable logs near a chimney.
- When your child is done, he’ll have a miniature gingerbread house to enjoy for weeks (or as long as you can hold him back from eating its candy!). This is a great time to pull out gingerbread picture books, too. At our house, Jan Brett’s “Gingerbread Boy” is a great favorite, as are those classic nursery rhymes about the gingerbread man.
- For a final stage of the adventure, try cutting a gingerbread man shape out of plain brown paper, and have your child decorate the front with markers and paint as she likes. On the back, let her dictate a story of her own to you about the gingerbread man and house; add extra pages as needed.
In the guise of a simple old-fashioned kitchen craft, you will have given your child valuable, relevant practice with core math and reading curriculum. And lest we forget—you will have had a sweet, memorable time together as well, perhaps starting a family tradition.
By Julie Williams
Julie Williams, M.A. Education, taught middle and high school History and English for seventeen years. Since then, she has volunteered in elementary classrooms while raising her two sons and earning a master's in school administration. She has also been a leader in her local PTA.
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