Edible Engineering: Gingerbread Cookie Traps

Every winter we try to plan a special after-school storytime to join everyone together one last time (before the Massachusetts snow sets in and no one leaves their house for the next 2 months).  In the past, we've created classic gingerbread houses, purchasing mass quantities of graham crackers, gumdrops, icing, and other sugary products that the kids love and the caregivers secretly hope no one actually eats.  This year we wanted to expand the minds of our elementary attendees and save a little in the budget for other programmings.  Introducing...

Gingerbread Cookie Traps

Our photo from the Library's instagram.  See the creative process!

I have no idea where I found my original inspiration for this project as there are many great iterations of "Gingerbread Cookie/Man Traps" on Pinterest.  I do know that the ideas for the STEM questions and connections came from Smart Chick on Teachers Pay Teachers (they provide the downloads for FREE!).

Preparations

I spent a month of saving small boxes from shipping and various odds and ends from staff and around the library.  These were primarily your standard clean recyclables (bottles, yogurt containers, etc.), but NOTHING is to weird to keep for a project like this.  In fact, the weirder, the better!  The kids loved large tape rolls in particular (I save ours throughout the year from our book binding station).  We also had VHS tapes, large (empty) empty curling ribbon spools, and laundry detergent caps.

Day of the Event: Craft Room

For the day of our Gingerbread Cookie Trap project, I placed out everything we had collected from recyling bins (see above) along with some standard craft materials:

• Scissors
• Duct tape (have at least a few rolls)
• Markers, chalk, etc.
• Foam (we had winter-themed foamables the kids could use to decorate their traps)
• Yarn/String

All of these were in a central location at the front of the room.  Kids raided the supplies every few minutes when they had a new idea and then went back to work at their station.  It was chaos, but an organized chaos.

 Day of the Event: Storytime

I had originally planned to read Catch that Cookie by Hallie Durand, but we had such a large group that I wanted to dedicate more time to the actual craft.  Instead, I dug out our Gingerbread Man flannels (purchased way before my time), threw them up on the board in a random order, and had the kids help me tell the story of The Gingerbread Man.  All of them were great at taking turns and knew the story very well!

Day of the Event: During and After

I always make it a point during a creative STEM event to walk around the room and ask open-ended questions. 
"How does this part work?"
"What will you do with that bottle?"
"Where did you get you idea for that?"

Cookies to end the day

The attendees had great answers and were very willing to show off how their traps will function.  Some decorated bottle caps to look like peppermints to lure their gingerbread cookies inside.  Some had moving parts to trap their cookies behind bars.  Some even just build a nice house for them and figured they'd be happy to stay!

When our engineers were done, I had them explain the entire system to me and then they received a gingerbread cookie (I baked these myself because I couldn't find any pre-made ones; I had to eat the extras, of course).

Feedback and Reception

The caregivers were very happy with the event; most commented about the creativity behind the idea and thanked us for hosting it.  The kids were so enthusiastic throughout the event and I was happy to be a part of this creativity.  Perhaps we'll do this again next year!