Gingerbread Nativity Instructions | Simple STEM Activity

Follow these simple gingerbread Nativity instructions next time you feel the need for a fun STEAM activity for kids! It’s fun and engaging for kids of all ages!

If you’re looking for a fun, unique way to do some STEM activities with your kids this holiday season, look no further than the gingerbread nativity.

This activity provides a great opportunity for kids to learn about basic engineering principles.

Plus, it’s just plain adorable!

So gather up your supplies and get started. Your kids are going to love it!

Why A Gingerbread Nativity Activity?

The holidays are quickly approaching and families everywhere are searching for Christ-centered Christmas activities for kids that are simple and fun. Our family added this gingerbread nativity project to our list of Christmas homeschool activities and traditions that we enjoy year after year.

I especially love doing Christmas crafts such as this DIY Nativity Scene with my kids because it reminds them about the true meaning of Christmas, while still being a lot of fun! 

Pro Tip – Depending on the specific structure you build, this could be used as a year-round edible STEM activity. Instead of a gingerbread or graham cracker nativity scene, just use a historical building instead!

These gingerbread nativities are simple for parents, fun for kids, and a good way to add some holiday homeschooling content to your December plans. Once you’ve shopped for your ingredients and gathered your kids, for the most part, you just need to supervise.

Unless your kids are still really young, you only need to assist here and there. Especially if you plan on doing a graham cracker nativity scene instead of baking your own gingerbread.

Love this project idea? You can even use it as a full-on cookie science fair project!

Gingerbread Nativity scenes are a fun way to turn traditional Christmas activities such as gingerbread houses and trains into Christ-centered activities. And as an added bonus, these nativities are even surprisingly educational!

After all, building a structurally sound stable is going to take a bit of engineering and possibly even a little bit of math, making these nativities a good example of a STEM activity as well.

So how exactly do you make a gingerbread nativity? What ingredients and materials do you need? How do you make a DIY stable out of graham crackers or gingerbread that actually stands?

And most importantly, how do you turn a simple Christmas activity such as a gingerbread nativity into an educational STEM activity?

All of these questions and more will be answered in this article, so keep on reading!

This article may contain affiliate links. Please see our disclosure policy for more details.

Using Gingerbread Houses and Nativities as Christmas STEM Activities

You’d be surprised at how easy it is to turn a simple holiday tradition such as a gingerbread house into a Christmas-themed STEM activity. All it takes is a couple of questions and a willingness to get messy and make mistakes. (Did anybody else hear Miss Frizzle when I said that?) 

For our gingerbread nativity experiment, the kids and I came up with a few questions we wanted to find the answers to. You can use these questions or come up with your own!

• What material is best for making a nativity out of? (homemade gingerbread or graham crackers)
• What material makes the best glue?
• What structure design works the best?

If your kids are creative enough, there is no limit to the number of questions they can come up with. Then while you’re doing your activity, work together to test out different hypotheses and figure out the answer.

Gingerbread Nativity (Or Graham Cracker Nativity Scene) Ingredients

For our nativities, since we were experimenting with various materials, we used more ingredients than we would have had we just used this as a general Christmas activity. See the details below the basic ingredient list for more information.

Basic Ingredient List:

• Material for structure (gingerbread, graham crackers, etc – see below)
• Material for glue (frosting, melted white chocolate, etc – see below)
• Candies for decorating (you’ll want candies to represent every major part of the Nativity Scene – see below for our recommendations)

Material for Structure 

This could be your favorite gingerbread recipe or a box of graham crackers. For younger kids, I recommend graham crackers. Older kids might have fun actually baking the gingerbread. 

We used this gingerbread recipe and while it was delicious, it was rather soft so not all structure designs were able to hold. This recipe should work for you if your structure is simple enough, otherwise, try a firmer recipe.

Material for Glue 

Here are just a few ideas for edible glue you can consider using in your nativities. Feel free to experiment with all kinds of materials!

• Royal Icing
• White Chocolate
• Melted Marshmallows
• Store Bought Frosting

Royal Icing

Royal icing is a very popular choice when building gingerbread houses and nativities because it is soft and easy to work with but then it hardens quite nicely after a short time. We had one kid test out royal icing and it worked fairly well. Not the most delicious of glues, but the structure and the candies held firm so that’s a plus.

Melted White Chocolate

One child used melted white chocolate as his glue and I have to say, this was a fantastic option. It was easy to spread and stick things with and it only required a minute or two of holding the item in place before it hardened and held firm.

I highly recommend using melted white chocolate for gingerbread houses and nativities. White chocolate worked well for the homemade gingerbread as well as the graham crackers.

I melted my white chocolate double-broiler method in a pan sitting inside of another pan (filled with water) on the stove).

Melted Marshmallows

Two of my kids tried melted marshmallows as their glue. Do I recommend melted marshmallows? No. The child who used graham crackers and melted marshmallows had mild success. It was sticky and annoying but her structure stood (after several minutes of wrangling a sticky marshmallow and graham cracker mess).

However, the child who used melted marshmallows and homemade gingerbread had a huge disaster and after 15 minutes of frustration, he had to scrap the whole thing and start over with graham crackers and white chocolate.

I just melted my marshmallows in the microwave for 30 seconds, then stirred.

Store Bought Frosting

And finally, there is store-bought frosting. My littlest kids used storebought frosting and graham crackers for their nativities and while it doesn’t hold as well as royal icing or melted white chocolate, it was very child-friendly and both my preschooler and my kindergartener had no trouble at all decorating (and eating) to their hearts’ content.

Homemade Frosting

While we did not try this personally, you could always opt for a simple homemade frosting using powdered sugar and milk (maybe a little butter and vanilla as well). I don’t know how well it would hold up…but that’s part of the experiment, right?

Candies for the Nativity Scene

Humans (Shepherds, Mary, Joseph, Baby Jesus, etc)

Candies that represent humans are a little bit tricky, but if you’re creative, you should be able to find plenty of options.

Sour patch kids and gummy bears are humanoid enough to work. In the past, we have also used those gingerbread man-shaped marshmallows you find in the baking aisle.

These are all good for Mary, Joseph, Baby Jesus, the wise men, the shepherds, and even the angels.

Encourage your kids to get creative with their Nativity Scenes.

Animals

Candies that look like animals is a lot easier because of all the animal cracker and cookie options. There are dozens of animal cracker and cookie choices at most local grocery stores.

This year, we used plain and frosted choices and the kids had fun decorating their Nativity Scenes with zoo and safari animals (not historically correct but it’s the thought that counts) and some of them even got creative and stuck gummy bear wise men onto the backs of frosted animal cookie camels.

Scenery

The most important piece of scenery is the manger for Baby Jesus. Last year all of the kids made their mangers out of pieces of graham crackers and this year they all used giant marshmallows. I am always impressed at the creativity and ingenuity of these kids of mine. Provide your kids with a few random options and see what they come up with!

Other scenery items you might consider include coconut shreds or shredded wheat for straw/grass, candy canes or licorice sticks for shepherd canes, and gummy candies or white chocolate-covered pretzels for the star. 

When shopping for candy, the easiest thing to do is make a list of items you want to represent (Mary, Joseph, Baby Jesus, the star, etc) then take your kids down the candy aisle and have them pick something out for each item. Kids are much more creative than we give them credit for.

Gingerbread Nativity Scene Instructions (More Ways To Include STEM)

Once your dough is made, roll it out (I used this handy measuring rolling pin to make sure all the pieces were the exact desired thickness) and then cut out your pieces. We made templates beforehand so everything would be easy to trace and keep consistent.

Bake your dough and then let your pieces cool. We waited to assemble until the next day.

Make sure each kid has the needed structure and glue materials (gingerbread vs graham crackers, frosting vs melted marshmallows vs melted chocolate, etc) and then let them get to work! Older kids can do this with minimal assistance and supervision whereas younger kids will need more help.

Do your best to allow each child to learn and explore according to his or her own specific skill level while still being there for needed support.

Once your stables have been built, your kids can use their creativity and imaginations to fill the stables with characters from The Nativity. This is the fun part, for parents and kids! It’s so fun to see what kinds of designs all the kids can come up with.

Tips for Making your Stable Structurally Sound

If your kids are older you should encourage them to try their hand at designing and building a strong structure all on their own. Have them come up with a shape or two and design a stable around the shape.

Younger kids will need more adult help and you might just give them a few choices that you know will be strong, or you can just do it for them, depending on their ages.

My oldest son decided to design a fancy stable using an octagon top with six rectangle legs underneath.

My oldest daughter wanted a traditional house-shaped structure, only she decided to leave the front open so you could see inside the barn.

My three middle kids couldn’t decide so I gave them the choices of a triangle or a rectangle. They all chose triangle which, coincidentally, turned out to be the strongest of all the structures we attempted.

My littlest boy just made a great big pile of graham crackers and candy, but he was happy so that was fine by me!

Make Sure Your Structure Materials Match Your Shape and Glue

A few tips for making your stables structurally sound – first, make sure the glue you are using is adequate to support your structure. My son’s octagon gingerbread structure and melted marshmallow combo was a complete failure, whereas my daughter’s triangle graham crackers and melted marshmallow structure worked just fine.

If you have a complex structure or are using more fragile material (such as gingerbread vs graham crackers) opt for a stronger glue (such as melted chocolate) if you don’t want it to collapse.

The triangle cave structure worked really well with gingerbread, graham crackers, melted marshmallows, melted chocolate, and store bought frosting. Turns out the triangle is as structurally sound as expert architects say it is, no matter what materials you are using.

My daughter used royal icing and an open-house structure, and while it was a nice idea, there just wasn’t enough support with the front half open the way it was. She either needed a stronger glue or a simpler structure. (Or perhaps a stronger wall made from graham crackers rather than gingerbread)

All in all, this was a highly successful Christmas STEM activity and all of the kids learned a ton of age-appropriate lessons revolving around geometry, architecture, structures, building, and more.

STEM Resources Delivered to Your Inbox Every Month

If you liked this edible STEM activity, you are going to love the STEM Made Easy Digital Subscription. Each month, you’ll receive 5 fully-planned STEM project guides along with worksheets and instructions for how to make them fun and engaging for kids ages 3-19. Check it out now!

Related Posts:

Christmas STEAM Activities
Christmas Activities in your Homeschool
STEAM-Based Homeschooling