Family Life gingerbread house STEM activity

Decorating a gingerbread house for Halloween

Decorating a gingerbread house for Halloween

It’s been a long time since we last made a Halloween gingerbread house. With the shops already full of delicious and tempting gingerbread house kits, I decided to pick one up for Halloween. Our house is decorated with all kinds of pumpkins and squashes as we’re trying to cut down on buying any new decorations. I thought decorating a gingerbread house would make a great Halloween activity for kids, and a bit of a STEM challenge to keep them busy too!

Halloween gingerbread house supplies:

M&S Gingerbread House Kit
Green popcorn
Mini gingerbread biscuits
Edible eyes
Edible glue
Chocolate drops
Edible Halloween decorations

Halloween gingerbread decorating supplies

Decorating a gingerbread house for Halloween

Now of course you can make a gingerbread house from scratch but I picked up the M&S Gingerbread House Kit for £5 which I thought was pretty good value. The parts were ready-made and it included white icing, a selection of sweets to decorate it with and a tray to hold it all in place.

The gingerbread smelled delicious and it was so tempting to break off a piece to eat! Instead we warmed the icing between our hands and started building the gingerbread house. It came with a plastic tray which helped keep the pieces together as the icing set. My 8 year old loved squeezing out a layer of icing onto the gingerbread and pressing the pieces together.

M&S Gingerbread House Kit

We built the walls then added the roof. I held it together for a few minutes to make sure the icing set firm. Then it was time to start decorating our Halloween gingerbread house.

M&S Gingerbread House Kit

As well as the sweets and sprinkles which came with the kit, we had a few of our own items too. My daughter was delighted to decorate the house, adding icing round the windows and doors and on the roof.

There was a frightening selection of iced Halloween treats and these were added to the front of the house, on the roof and just about everywhere you can imagine. There were pumpkins either side of the front door and creepy edible eyes added in unexpected places!

decorating a Halloween gingerbread house

It was a fun make and kept us occupied for an hour. Here is our finished gingerbread house for Halloween. It makes a great decoration although will need to be eaten before we make a start on our more traditional Christmas gingerbread house.

decorating a gingerbread house for Halloween

2 Comments

  • Reply
    Nick
    October 30, 2020 at 9:53 am

    What a lovely idea, and a great project for the children (or grandchildren) to get involved with. I agree that £5 for the M&S gingerbread house kit sounds pretty good value.

  • Reply
    Rhian westbury
    October 31, 2020 at 11:30 am

    I love how this is all halloween themed, and I agree that’s a pretty good value gingerbread set so I may have to pick one of those up for Christmas as I love gingerbread x

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