Also, another program that I did not technically plan, but did help out with the staffing. Sara planned this one with another staff member who got sick unexpectedly, so I jumped in to help pass out materials and answer questions. It ended up being a total blast; we took the tradition of making gingerbread houses and added a mathematical twist!
Materials:
- Graham crackers (6 per child)
- Icing (Can be store bought, or made using powdered sugar and water)
- Assortment of candy for decorating
- Plastic table covering
- Plastic knives (one per child)
- Ruler (one per child)
- Disposable trays (one per child)
Step one: Give each child six graham crackers.
Step two: Cut one inch off of two of your graham crackers.
Step three: Using icing, form a rectangle with the graham crackers to be the walls of your house.
At this point, there was a discussion about area. The audience was slightly younger than I think Sara was anticipating. She was planning to have tweens who would understand math concepts, but we ended up with a couple of tweens and the rest under five years old. So she skipped having them write down the wall measurements and then multiplying those measurements to find the area of the house. She also briefly explained what the volume of a shape is, but skipped the written part of figuring out the volume of our houses. In case you want to do this with an older age group, here is that information (the inch measurements are not exact, just examples. As a group you can measure your crackers and figure out the exact measurements).
Area: The side of a surface
Area = width x height; A=wh
Long sides of the graham crackers are 5 inches (length). Short sides are 4 inches (width). The area of the gingerbread houses are length times width, or 5x4=20. The area of your house is 20 inches.
Volume: The measure of the amount of space inside a solid figue
Volume = length x width x height; V=lwh
Long sides of the graham crackers are 5 inches (length). Short sides are 4 inches (width). When standing up, the crackers are 2 inches tall (height). The volume of the gingerbread houses are 5x4x2=40.
Instead of doing the math with pencils and paper, we moved on to the next part of the building.
Step four: Use your remaining two graham crackers to add a triangular or flat roof
Step five: Decorate with icing and candy!
While we had a few families attempt the triangular roof, the icing dried too slowly and most of the kids opted for the easier flat roof.
Before we started, I made 12 individual cups with some of each kind of candy: Twizzlers, Red Hots, those buttery dinner mints, individually wrapped peppermints, and gum drops. This way there was no fighting over candy because each participant had the exact same thing in their cup, and everyone had the same amount of icing (a powdered sugar/water mixture in baggies for easy piping) to decorate with. Check out their amazing creations!
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| The roof is a monster face eating candy! |
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