When I first started teaching, my idea of a party was food and a movie. As a teacher, I am always looking for ways to improve and so I decided last year I wanted to involve parents in the classroom more and involve them in our parties. For Christmas, I asked the parents to join us to decorate Gingerbread Houses. Thank Goodness we have amazing parents! They donated EVERYTHING we needed! We received 6 kits before our party that I hot glued together the day before. If you choose to do this with your kids - I STRONGLY recommend this. Any house I have ever made has been a pain to put together, but hot gluing them keeps them in tact so they can easily be decorated.
Hot glue the houses in advance:
All items were prepared before the party. I put one house/kit at each table plus 2 plates of additional candies to decorate. There was one tub of white icing and one tub I had put green food coloring in. Each child also got a plate with a cone on it to make a Christmas Tree while the parent leading their group got a game plan together and opened anything else.
We started by letting the kids decorate their own Christmas tree. They used the green icing and a craft stick to spread it on and then any of the candies they wanted to decorate.
I let them eat them after they were done decorating so they could get that out of their system before decorating the Gingerbread Houses. They LOVED that! :) Next up, they decorated the houses. The parents handled most of the squeeze icing and kind of helped them get their ideas together, but the kids did most of the decorating.
The finished houses with my students and wonderful helpers!
And of course when we finished and got cleaned up, we had a yummy snack. We had Little Debbie Christmas Tree cakes, fruit cups/applesauce, cheetos and juice :)
Do you have Christmas Parties at your school? What do you do for a party?
Love that idea! We had a Kindergarten Gingerbread Night at the beginning of December for families to come and make gingerbread houses at school. We had a good turn out as a grade level, but only two of my students came that night. Most of them were disappointed they didn't get to make a house. We made the iced Christmas trees though and they LOVED decorating them. Looks like you all had fun :)
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