A Festive Gingerbread House Competition at LSI Berkeley

Students and staff came together at LSI Berkeley on Friday, December 12th to kick off our holiday celebrations with what has become an annual gingerbread house competition.  As always, this competition was a reminder that there can be so much more to LSI students than English Language Learners.  Our students are architects, marketers, engineers, and story tellers—and today they got to show off some of those skills.

Each class at LSI was tasked with the creation of a gingerbread house to be judged by our administrative staff based on creativity, overall execution, structural stability, and presentation.  The results were incredible.  Some classes went the traditional route and some brought a whole new perspective to gingerbread houses.  There was a ‘Mick Jagger’ gingerbread house, featuring an oversized icing tongue as a welcome mat.  One class decided they’d incorporate a little bit of Halloween charm, and wound up creating a Ginger-House-of-Horrors, complete with front lawn graveyard.  The winning gingerbread house was a retelling of the ‘Three Little Pigs’ story through a gingerbread tableau—students created not one, but three houses, each representing a different one of the houses in the iconic fairy tale.

Happy Holidays from all of us here in Berkeley!

Ann Bassini Milanezi with her Gingerbread House (left) and the winners with the 3 Little Pigs (right)
Ann Bassini with her Gingerbread House (left), the winners with the 3 Little Pigs (right)