Gingerbread house building senior section style

One of our Rangers baked the pieces for our unit to build houses. her original intention had been to buy premade kits but she couldn't get hold of any cheap ones. I was pretty impressed that she took the bull by the horns and instead of giving up, got on with it.  She is a Guider of the future.

These sort of activities aren't just good fun, they work on many levels.

Planning.  For most activities, just like the snowman, we tend to just say 'there is what you need, off you go.'  They have to work out how to achieve the end goal.  It's amazing to see the ones with common sense (and the ones without!) working it out.

Team working.  One girl alone can not build a house (if they want it to stay up!)

Dealing with disaster.  Listening to my Cog saying 'it's never going to work, we'll never do it' and others saying 'come on, let's do it this way instead'.  I think experiencing things going wrong and learning how to manage it, even in seemingly unimportant circumstances is important. 

Especially when it goes completely wrong and we leaders still don't offer assistance, they've got to motivate themselves to start again and try again.  And they did.  It seems a bit heartless (and we aren't as cruel as it sounds, honest) but there won't always be an adult around to pick up pieces for them.  Soon many of these girls will be leaving home for the first time. 







We have done things where they've given up, last years christmas origami was a disaster for most of us!  But this time they just got on with it again.

And they built a house.  Yes, it was propped up by cups but in fairness the house I made last year had cups hidden inside it holding it up and I remember considering super-gluing the chimney!

We had one house to 4 girls.  8 or 9 girls for a meeting night is average turnout for us. The unit naturally splits between the younger and the older girls, it works for them.

Each group broke them up at the end of the activity and ate what they wanted too.

The kits were £4 each. They included the gingerbread mix, royal icing mix, jelly sweets, red and green crispies, templates and piping bag.

We used my lakeland thick piping bags and icing nozzles and also had an extra bag of mini marshmallows and jazzies.

This was a really good activity and I would recommend it for Rangers and Guides.