I love the gingerbread project! It has been a passion of mine for several years now and has causes both excitement and terror among the staff at my school, let’s face it, the idea of cooking, cleaning and mess isn’t on the top of the priority list at this time of year. Why do it? Students are engaged in designing, cooking and assembling their creations. It gives purpose to the activities in the last few weeks of school and keeps the students engaged. Most of all, it is a great way to spread Christmas cheer and celebrate the relationships you have built with your class.

Gingerbread history

Over the last six or so years, the Gingerbread competition has become an annual event at Castlemaine North. In essence, the Gingerbread event is way of celebrating creativity, engineering, mathematics, the festive season and a lovely way to engage students (especially senior students) during the last stages of term 4. Some of my most treasured moments in my career have been constructing gingerbread with my students with the Michael Buble’ Christmas album pumping. It is a great way to celebrate the relationships built with your students and parents in your classroom and creates lasting memories. Over the years the competition has evolved to cover a range of content and outcomes. We’ve gone big – school wide event and small – one class with a range of gingerbread pieces and 3 hours to make something – MasterChef style. We have seen a replica of our school, Hogwarts, beach houses, small towns, the Faraway Tree, racetracks and ginger ninjas. This year, based on time and content we need to cover, we will aim to have some groups build an interesting house.