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Struthers 4th graders build gingerbread houses for holidays
STRUTHERS
Parents and guardians armed with gingerbread, cookies and other assorted sweets joined their fourth-grade students Wednesday for an afternoon of confectionery construction at Struthers Elementary’s annual gingerbread house building day.
More than 50 adults – parents, grandparents, guardians and others – attended the event, sitting with their students to participate in the decoration of their own gingerbread houses.
The event – essentially a rite of passage for Struthers Elementary fourth-graders – has been a staple of the holiday season for at least two decades.
Pam Jones, a math and science teacher who has taught at Struthers Elementary School for 16 years, said the event gives the younger students something to look forward to and provides the fourth-graders with a memento they can keep for years.
“We try to make the day special for the kids and the adults,” Jones said. “The houses end up being a nice bit of nostalgia for a lot of students.”
The students began their construction with a cardboard house model – prepared in advance by the fourth-grade teachers – and proceeded to decorate the exterior of the houses.
Most participants began by spreading a layer of icing around the exterior of the house, but from there the students’ ideas took over and the tiny structures began to vary wildly.
“Some of the ideas the students come up with are really amazing,” Jones said. “No two houses are alike.”
Some students used vanilla cookie wafers as shingles, while others used colored gumdrops to line the crest of their roofs. Square pretzels from snack mix became box windows, and graham crackers were used for doors. Red licorice accented the corners of one house, and Skittles stood in as the cobblestone walk leading up to the entrance to another.
James Moody and his son, Devin, were among the many builders making a gingerbread house and had a bag of flaked coconut they planned to use as snow. The younger Moody said he’d been looking forward to the event since he began school.
“I was excited to get to fourth grade and excited to make a gingerbread house,” Devin said.
His father was just happy to be with his son for the day. “Just happy to be spending some time with my oldest son,” James said.