Gingerbread Baby: Simple and Sweet Gingerbread Houses

Posted by Nicole Carney on Nov 21, 2013 in Christmas Activities, Gingerbread Man Activities, Kids in the Kitchen, Literacy Activities, Picture Book Activities, Winter Activities, Winter Picture Book Activities | 0 comments

Jan Brett’s Gingerbread Baby is a great twist on the original classic fairy tale. What I like most about this story, besides the beautiful illustrations, is that in the end the Gingerbread Baby gets to live in a cozy gingerbread house, rather than being gobbled up by a fox!

If you are unable to get your hands on a copy of Gingerbread Baby, but would still like to read/hear the book, you can watch and follow along as the story is read aloud:

The Gingerbread Baby by Jan Brett from Joanne Kaminski on Vimeo.

Simple and Sweet Gingerbread Houses

After reading the story aloud to M and B, we decided to make some simple gingerbread houses. Okay, so they actually aren’t made of gingerbread at all, but graham crackers are just as tasty and they are readily available.

Ingredients:

Graham crackers (3 for each house)
Icing
An assortment of candy (we used candy canes, Skittles, butterscotch chips, mini marshmallows, Hershey Kisses, chocolate chips, candy sticks, sprinkles and Life Savers)
Teddy Grahams (to represent the Gingerbread Baby)
Small piece of cardboard
Tin foil

Assembling the Gingerbread Houses

I started by creating a work surface for the boys to build their houses on, by cutting up some cardboard into squares and wrapping them in tinfoil.

Then I separated our ingredients into the compartments of a muffin tin to make them easier for the boys to grab.

I helped my bugs build their gingerbread houses by putting one graham cracker on the bottom and steepling the other two against one another while ‘glueing’ the edges together with white icing.

Then the boys got to work decorating their houses:

M built a walkway out of Life Savers…

and a sled out of candy canes and a Life Saver.

I showed the boys how to make marshmallow snowmen.

The finishing touch was adding the Gingerbread Baby inside of the house!

The simple design of these gingerbread houses make them sturdy (you don’t have to worry about them collapsing while decorating them) and the perfect size for little ones to enjoy as a special treat.