Kindergartners spent their Friday at South Butler Primary School building gingerbread houses and sneaking some icing and candy treats when their teachers weren't looking. Addison Mowry, left, and Norah Hutchman, right, worked with adult Kimberly Lunn.

SAXONBURG — The South Butler Primary School's morning and afternoon kindergarten classes got into the spirit of the season Friday by participating in Gingerbread House Day.

In all eight classrooms, of the school at 328 Knoch Road, 149 kindergartners had a chance to show off their creativity by using cake frosting and graham crackers to build a gingerbread house and adding candy, gumdrops and cereal as decorations and roofing.

In Misty Mohney's class, Odin, 7, and Fiona, 5, worked to put the finishing touches on their nearly complete gingerbread creations.

Odin seemed unsure of what to do with the candy cane he had unwrapped,

“I don't know yet,” he said. “I may make a chimney.”

His neighbor, Fiona, was struggling to keep her two candy canes upright on the roof of her house. She figured she may have needed more frosting to keep the canes standing.

At least she was using the frosting as it was intended, as a building material. At tables around the classroom, frosting was being diverted to other uses despite the oversight of Mohney and parents brought in for the day to help supervise construction.

“No more eating the frosting,” warned Mohney. “We don't need anybody getting a bellyache.”

“It's part of the festive season for the holidays,” said Mahoney of the gingerbread activities. “The students get to put frosting on small milk cartons and build using graham crackers.

“They can put them to use in their own way, using their own creativity,” she said.

“At the end of the day they will take them home, but for now they can just have a good time with it. There are no rules,” Mohney said.

There may be no rules and there may have been a lot of laughter, but it didn't mean lessons weren't being taught.

In every classroom students will have the opportunity to use their creativity and fine motor skills to build gingerbread houses, said Jenny Webb, South Butler School District director of communications.

In addition, kindergarten teacher Kristy Love was using gingerbread in all its forms in her Kindergarten Literacy Intervention Program (KLIP) classes.Love said her students will be doing a literature-based Gingerbread Boy Day to coincide with the Kindergarten Gingerbread House Day.For example, Love said, one of the independent work stations involved two students taking turns pulling gingerbread letters out of a bag.“They're pulling out capital letters and they have to color the corresponding letter on their sheet,” Love said.Achilles, 5, and Jay, 5 were passing the bag back and forth.Achilles said, “I have a loose tooth.”But then he explained the object of the exercise. “You have to pick out a letter than color it in.”Even the gingerbread house construction is instructive, said Webb.“They learn sequencing, putting on the icing, then adding the graham crackers,” said Webb, adding understanding that things often must be done in order is important when learning to do math problems further on in their elementary school careers.Webb said there has been a Gingerbread House Day during the holidays in each of the 16 years since the primary school was built.

Kindergartner Aubrey Titus, 6, pieces together a gingerbread house.