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"   Having mastered chocolate cupcakes, snickerdoodles, and homemade pizza, I figured my now 4-year old granddaughter was ready to tackle a gingerbread house. Instinctively I knew that we should start with a kit that includes prebaked gingerbread pieces and make the project a decorating exercise rather than a baking one. At Michaels the arts &amp;amp;amp; crafts store, I picked up a Wilton kit. As you can see from the photo, we built a cute little house that Caitlin deemed, &amp;quot;Ready for Hansel &amp;amp;amp; Gretel &amp;amp;amp; the witch&amp;quot;. Both of us had a ball putting it together but having started out with almost no experience at all with this particular activity, I learned quite a few lessons, particularly where a preschooler is involved, and thought I&amp;#039;d share what I discovered in case you&amp;#039;re planning to make your own gingerbread cottage before the holidays.   First of all, read the directions ahead of time. Yes, I know what you&amp;#039;re thinking and sorry to disappoint you but I didn&amp;#039;t. The instructions call for &amp;quot;gluing&amp;quot; the walls and roof together with royal icing in stages with long waiting periods of an hour or more in between to let them set before proceeding with the part that involved peppermint candies. Now I&amp;#039;m sure you know this went over big with Caitlin. She was actually willing to hold the pieces together herself while they dried but didn&amp;#039;t have the strength to hold them tight or the eye to keep them in alignment. So while cans kept the pieces in place as the icing &amp;quot;glue&amp;quot; dried and cemented them together, we played restaurant, read Fancy Nancy, and colored. Lesson learned: Preassemble the house yourself and then call in the junior decorator(s). Using the pastry bag that came in the box to decorate the walls wasn&amp;#039;t easy for C (or me) but with a small spatula she was able to plaster the roof with icing and get on to the fun part...sticking candies randomly into the &amp;quot;snow&amp;quot;. Big lesson here: Forget about the pictures on the box and let your little builder exercise her own creativity. Although the kit comes with an assortment of candy, I&amp;#039;d recommend supplementing it with additional goodies. Some of the gumdrops found themselves in someone&amp;#039;s mouth before they made it to the roof. Little candy balls were a little too little for little hands and wound up rolling on the floor rather than outlining the roof. But as how could you not agree, we wound up with a house to do us proud! If you feel up to the challenge of making a gingerbread house from scratch, see our recipe for Spicy Gingerbread Dough. Gingerbread house building not your style? Here on goodhousekeeping.com, we have lots of other ideas for cooking with kids. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/institute/a23051/secrets-for-making-a-gingerbread-house/>