Though a few were more interested in eating their building supplies than using them, a couple classrooms of kindergarteners at Decas Elementary still managed to build whimsical houses decorated with sparkling gumdrops and cloud-like marshmallows on Monday.

The kindergarteners, in Maggie Kuppens’ and Michele Lefrancois’ classrooms, built the houses not only to have fun before the holidays, but also to learn a little engineering, in the process. Kuppens said the kids “read every single version” of the popular kids’ tale about the gingerbread person. In nearly every version, the gingerbread person gets eaten by the fox who carries them over the river, so Kuppens’ class wanted to figure out a way for the gingerbread person to avoid getting eaten altogether.

“If he had a house to live in, he would have been fine,” Kuppens said. “We started talking about how we could create our own houses, and what we could do.”

Kuppens said her students researched different ways to build the houses online, and brainstormed different candies they could use. Parents then brought in bags of candy, and small tubs of frosting, and a few came in to help.

Lefrancois’ classroom also created houses, but with a slight twist: the students were to draw out their houses, first, and then try to get the houses they actually made as close to their drawings as possible.

“They had to plan out what their gingerbread houses were going to look like,” Lefrancois said. “I showed them the different assortments of candies we were going to have to use.”

Lefrancois said she was impressed with how closely the students managed to construct the houses they had envisioned. Not only were the pieces mostly matched up, but even the colors were the same.

“These are five-year-olds, and their plan looks almost exactly like their house,” Lefrancois said.

But Lefrancois said the class wouldn’t stop there.

“This afternoon, we are going to be counting how many different shapes they used … and then tomorrow morning is going to be a writing exercise, where they have to find some descriptive words to talk about their house,” Lefrancois said.