Our Little Gingerbread House

This holiday season I decided I wanted to do something special to decorate our room. I had seen pictures of other classrooms where teachers had turned the outside of their doors into gingerbread houses. Armed with a giant roll of brown bulletin board paper and my trusty sidekick Ms. Donna, I set out to create a masterpiece of my own.

The project began simply with just the basic house design on the wall Tuesday afternoon. When the children came in Wednesday morning they were curious as to what I was creating, but most of them did not think it looked like a gingerbread house.

Wednesday afternoon I created a concoction of white paint and clear glitter. My original plan was to create glittering frosting to outline the house and roof. Well, I ended up with frosting all right; it just didn't glitter. It was quite a thick substance and I dropped a considerable amount on the carpet. I'm afraid they'll not ask me back next year due to the poor state of the carpet in and around my room! We love Play-doh, but it doesn't love us! I outlined the entire house and added snowy shingles to the roof. When we came in this morning it had dried to a lovely thick frosting consistency. It was perfect! The children loved it and all the classes that passed by had to oohh and aahh! I think my little friends were quite proud of their gingerbread room!

I spent this afternoon decorating our house with adorable peppermint candy crafts that the children had made. As a finishing touch I added a gingerbread bulletin board set I found tucked away behind my cabinet. I had bought it this summer and completely forgot about it. As you can see from the picture below the entrance to our little class has been transformed into a magical gingerbread dream!

Due to the effort it took to put the thing together I have decided to leave it up for the rest of the year. In January it will transform into a winter cottage with snowmen and some penguins sledding down an adjacent hill I will add. February and March will also have winter themes. In April I will flip the paper around to hide the snow/frosting accents and we will have a simple cottage that will be outfitted for the spring. I'm excited to see how each month's decorations turn out! I'll add pictures as we make changes.