The Great Gingerbread Glow-Up!
It’s December, which means we have begun our Gingerbread Literacy Unit! A goal of mine is to always offer students a toy to play with during Choice Time that incorporates our current theme. For our Five Senses Unit, I introduced Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head. For our unit on Trees, I provided a Tree House Engineering Set.
But what toy would encourage cooperative and imaginative play for the gingerbread theme? Would you believe that a homemade gingerbread craft just happened to pop up in my Instagram feed? All I needed was a pre-loved plastic house (like those from Fisher-Price, Bluey, or Dora), brown spray paint, white puffy paint, glue, and plastic candies. I sent an email to my class parents and asked if anyone had a house that their child was no longer using. Sure enough, one was sent in!
Here is the back side.
My first step was to wipe it down and then add blue tape to the parts of the house I wanted to keep the original color.
Then I spray-painted the house a nice, gingerbread brown color, made by Krylon.
Next, I added a bunch of plastic sugary treats, like these
I sprayed a clear coat over the gingerbread house to protect the paint from peeling. I then realized that the children needed accessories to encourage imaginative play. I found this reasonably priced wooden furniture set
But it wasn’t very “gingerbready.” So, I used the same brown spray paint to paint all the furniture pieces. Then, I took a white chalk marker and drew some accents. Once everything was dry, I varnished the pieces. I love how it all turned out!
The most amazing part of this project is that another family offered to 3D print gingerbread girls and boys for me, which the students could use to play in the house! They surprised me by creating gingerbread cats and dogs as well! Today was the first day the students were able to explore the gingerbread house, and their enthusiasm was catching!
I know there will be many fun Choice Times ahead with this special toy! Thank you to all who helped me create this unique toy for our classroom!
*If you are interested in purchasing these items, click on the underlined words, and you will be brought to the Amazon link.
