Gingerbread House Ornaments: an easy Christmas craft for toddlers and preschoolers to make.
We’re churning out the homemade Christmas ornaments here, and today we whipped up some gingerbread house ornaments for the Christmas tree.
This is just one of a number of gingerbread crafts that we’ve made here for the holidays. Â We have scented gingerbread men ornaments, a cardboard gingerbread house, Â a playdough cookie decorating activity and also a recipe for the best, soft, ginger cookies you’ve ever tasted.
They were really easy to make and call for simple materials that you likely already have around your home or in your craft cupboards.
Supplies for gingerbread house ornaments:
- styrofoam
- brown paint
- craft jewels
- rick rack
- cotton balls
- paint brush
- glue
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Making our gingerbread house ornaments:
You can use any kind of styrofoam to cut your houses from. Â I always save up the styrofoam that products come packaged in. Â It comes in handy for crafting with. Â Today though, I borrowed some from my hubby. Â He has a stash of styrofoam sheets in the garage, and I used one of them for this project.
The Hooligans painted their houses brown and then they stretched cotton balls to form the “snow” that they glued to their roof-tops.
To decorate the houses, they glued on craft jewels, sequins, and bits of sparkly, metallic rick-rack.This was such a simple idea, but the Hooligans were so proud of their creations when they were finished. Â We thought they looked good enough to eat!
Find all of our Christmas Crafts for Kids on my Happy Hooligans Christmas Crafts and Activities board on Pinterest!
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Jackie is a mom, wife, home daycare provider, and the creative spirit behind Happy Hooligans. She specializes in kids’ crafts and activities, easy recipes, and parenting. She began blogging in 2011, and today, Happy Hooligans inspires more than 2 million parents, caregivers and Early Years Professionals all over the globe.
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kierna
love them Jackie – they look very realistic – good enough to eat!
michelle
adorable!
catherine @ sun hats & wellie boots
Wow! Such a fantastic creative activity – love them!
catherine @ sun hats & wellie boots
Wow! Such a fantastic idea – Love them!
happyhooligans
Thanks gals!
Kate edgell
Love these!
mybuddiesandi
Do you know that it seems like every single Christmas craft I click on because I want to make it with my buddies seems to come back to your blog? LOVE them all! I shared some on fb and then my sister came over with the supplies to make them, lol.
nvmom
How does the styrofoam hold up to the kids’ decorating? I love this idea but am not sure if I should put the time and energy into hunting down some styrofoam, or if I should just think of an alternate material to use for the house?
happyhooligans
It held up just fine 🙂 We did another activity with Styrofoam this past fall, and they kids played with it all day, and it held up perfectly too. It’s a nice dense styrofoam, it’s not the crumbly type that breaks up easily.
nvmom
My apologies! When I first looked at this I thought that the styrofoam was just a thin sheet. I was going back over the pics and noticed that they were actually blocks! That would definitely hold up under little hands! I asked dh if he could get some styrofoam from his work so hopefully we can do this craft this week. Thanks 🙂
glenna
Im lousy at crafting and have a 3yr old girl and want to start learning for her,how did u shape these houses so perfect? I stumbled onto your page and im stuck hehe ty its so fun be a kid again
happyhooligans
I just cut my styro blocks with a bread knife, Glenna. The knife “saws” through the styro quite easily. I do it outside though because there are a lot of little bits while I’m cutting.