Christmas Crafts: Easy Felt Gingerbread House

Simple and easy Christmas crafts are my favorite because my kids think I am a fun mom and I don't have to do anything crazy.

Last year for the Creative Christmas Countdown we shared how to make two different types of Snow Villages. This year we decided to share a simple toddler craft, so we made Felt Gingerbread houses! These can easily work for kids of all ages just by adapting the materials that you use.

Materials: thin cardboard, scissors, brown felt, tacky/craft glue, pen, any embellishments you have around the house (buttons, sequins, yarn, feathers, pipe cleaners, etc.)

Instructions:

Draw a house shape on a piece of cardboard and cut it out.

Use the cardboard house to help you cut out a similar sized piece of brown felt.

Repeat those steps until you have as many gingerbread houses out of cardboard and felt as you want.

Glue a brown felt house onto a matching cardboard house and press it between two heavy objects while it dries (so that it doesn't warp/bend).

Once the felt house is dry, use tacky glue and start designing your felt gingerbread house with embellishments you have around the house!

Our tacky glue was super thick for some reason, so my kids told me where to put their glue because they couldn't squeeze it out themselves. Once they had some glue on their felt, they started creating! 

I HIGHLY recommend that you craft along with your kids! I was so tempted to "fix" or add to their gingerbread houses to make them look like how I would've made my own. Making my own helped me curb that temptation. Honestly, their houses turned out much cuter than mine did... I especially love how they both included huge buttons and feathers.

(See... mine wasn't as cute or creative)

The best part about this craft is that you can really do whatever you want using whatever supplies are your favorites. Buttons are the biggest hit at our house right now... so you'll notice that my son used a lot of them!

What is your child's favorite embellishment?

After you're done with your felt gingerbread house, you can always try creating a rice crispy gingerbread house, just for fun. Below is the simple toddler version we came up with this year. All we did was trace our cardboard house shape onto a pan of rice crispies, cut it out, and then we decorated it with candy and frosting. Hooray!

We like ending any gingerbread house projects by reading Jan Brett's book Gingerbread Friends.

Do you have any other favorite gingerbread themed books?

Have you been following along with the 2012 Creative Christmas Countdown? If you've missed any of the advent activities yet, head on over to Red Ted Art or Creative with Kids and get caught up (they are our fabulous hosts this year!). I am featured on Day 18... so there are 17 awesome activities that have already been shared... and 6 more that are still coming!