Cook and Count

Candy House/village

Materials

• Clean and empty milk cartons
• The top of a shoebox or any really sturdy shallow box
• Marshmallows
• Assorted candies of your choice- some door and window sizes and shapes
• Assorted flat, rectangular sweet biscuits (cookies) of your choice (graham crackers are a very convenient size)!
• Sugar “cement” (see recipe this section)
• Plastic knives

Method

Assemble the cartons and the box top into either a single house or a village. Decide where the houses will be and where the paths or garden will be. To make everything more stable, superglue at least one of the cartons to the box top. If you put it in a corner that will help stabilize it too. (The candy will make the whole structure very heavy.)

Give the child/ren the “cement” when their house or houses are in position. Put the “cement” on one wall at a time with the plastic knives and stick the biscuits on firmly leaving spaces for candy doors and windows. When the walls are complete. Do the rooftops. While the “cement” is still soft, sprinkle any sugar candy sprinkles you want on the spaces in-between the cookies.

In the space around the house/houses, make paths with small candies and “snow-covered bushes” with white marshmallows.
The houses will take about ½ hour to dry and harden.
It takes the children about an hour to do this project if you have the materials and the cement ready when they start.

Candy houses were made successfully by 3 and 4 year olds in my preschool. I suggest you start by having the children make a single house one Christmas, before attempting a village the next.

Related Content

When the children finish candy houses, see  the "Making a Candy House" sequence.