I've done a gingerbread workshop at a variety of museums. It has
always been super fun and a lot of work. I have never managed to get
a baker on board so we have always baked the bread ourselves. The
bakers I spoke with were not interested in donating services and cost
was too much for us to use them. What we did was buy boxes of
pre-made gingerbread mix and had volunteers (and staff) bake batches
at home. We basically put little "kits" into zip lock bags for each
kid--the kit had four walls and two panels for the roof. We limited
the number of participants, had people sign up in advance and had
"workshops" over a weekend. I think we limited each session to 20
participants. We provided frosting and lots of candy for decorating
and charged a fee for participation. The workshops filled instantly
and we had a waiting list. However, we only displayed houses for that
weekend and then let families take them home.

Some tips: have lots of extra gingerbread walls and roof panels for
breakages. Get pastry bags for the frosting as it is difficult to
manage. Suggest that families bring their own candy if they want (to
reduce the expense to you).

Really--the only difficult part is baking the gingerbread.

I hope this helps.

Have fun,
Jessica Ruskin
Program Director
--
Explorit Science Center
3141 5th Street
P.O. Box 1288
Davis, CA 95617
(530) 756-0191
FAX (530) 756-1227
http://www.explorit.org

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