Community building, one gumdrop at a time

Braylee Meekswood, fifth-grade student at Park Elementary, is pictured here with her “High Rise” which took over five hours, 5 boxes of graham crackers, and “lots of frosting” to create. Celebrating its 100th anniversary in 2021, this building, and replica for that matter, reaches for the sky and ignites imagination.

With each graham cracker, gumdrop, and marshmallow perfectly placed, Park Elementary School’s fifth-grade students brought Great Bend landmarks to life this holiday season. Participating in the 2020 Gingerbread STEAM Community Global Project, students were challenged to reflect on their community and engineer the places and people that make their hometown thrive.

“We were very impressed with the students’ designs,” said Signe Cook, fifth-grade teacher at Park Elementary. “From their creations, we see Great Bend through their eyes and their response to the essential question, ‘Who and what make your community special?’”

“The most challenging park was putting on the graham crackers and making them stay in place,” said Braylee Meekswood, who engineered the gingerbread High Rise (located at 1101 Kansas Avenue).

Meekswood worked with her grandparents on the project for over five hours. She said it required five boxes of graham crackers, mints, marshmallows, lollipops, and lots of frosting.

A virtual tour through Park’s gingerbread Great Bend highlights some other community favorites like the Wetland Waterpark, Game Stop, Applebee’s, the Golden Belt Humane Society, Scooters Coffee, and more.

Reminiscing on the sights and sounds of summer, this fifth-grade student from Park Elementary created a gingerbread model of the Wetlands Waterpark. The 2020 Gingerbread STEAM Community Global Project challenged students to reflect on the special qualities of their community and engineer a “gingerbread house” to highlight these places and people.

Park Elementary joined 103 classrooms across the United States and Canada in the 2020 Gingerbread Project. Organized by two Kansas teachers, Micha Brown from Andover and Dyane Smokorowski from Wichita, the project was started in the Fall of 2013 and has grown each year.

“My passion is to see children become creative and imaginative problem solvers,” said Brown.

More information about this K-12 project can be found at gingerbreadstemcommunity.weebly.com.

The community is invited to visit the Park Elementary School Facebook page for a virtual photo tour of the gingerbread Great Bend. For questions, please contact the District Education Center at 620-793-1500.

Fifth-grade teachers from Park Elementary School, Signe Cook and Nicole Bieker, invited their studnets (and families) to participate in the 2020 Gingerbread STEAM Community Global Project. They joined 103 classrooms across North America in the task of reflecting on their community, its unique qualities, landmarks, and people, and engineering a gingerbread house to highlight what they found to be “special.”