St Rose of Lima School students came together and showed their holiday spirit by making gingerbread houses on Friday, December 6.

Everyone went into the Gathering Hall towards the end of the school day and was overseen in the activity by St Rose Dean of Student Life Mary Jo Bokuniewicz. Under her guidance, students grouped up and made gingerbread houses out of giant cardboard boxes.

There was a wide variety of other accessories and materials that students could use to beautify their gingerbread houses. Different colored candy canes, construction paper, ribbon, tape, tinsel, balloons, and more were set throughout the front of the room for students to decorate their gingerbread houses with.

Students could design their gingerbread houses however they wanted, with one condition: St Rose staff had to be able to pick them up and move them into the foyer. If they went to lift it and it fell apart, then the students would have failed the challenge.

Afterwards, the gingerbread houses would be displayed in the school’s foyer area. Bokuniewicz also said they might put them in the Holy Innocents building on campus for the school’s Christmas Craft Fair on Saturday, December 14.

The activity was a Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math (STEAM) project, and is one of many activities that students have done as part of the school’s buddy program.

St Rose’s buddy program partners two different grade levels to do service activities together. The school’s staff slowly started rolling out the program many years ago, according to Bokuniewicz. At first, only a few classes buddied up and did activities such as read stories or work on a project together.

As the years went by, St Rose staff started buddying up the whole school. Older students now partner up with younger students for various service projects. Just this year, Bokuniewicz said that the school had their Turkey Trot, where two classes buddied up and collected non-perishable items. Students worked hard and ended up collecting around 3,900 items overall.

The whole idea, Bokuniewicz said, is for younger students to make connections with older students, not just so they can have a role model, but to give them a little bit of comfort and safety. She added that it helps them “feel like they’re a part of the bigger school,” which she felt was important.

“What happens, especially with the little ones, is that they’ll see their buddy in the hallway, and now they recognize another face or two in the school besides their classmates,” Bokuniewicz said.

The gingerbread house event is a natural extension of the school’s other buddy activities. For this project, students worked in their buddy groups, and helped each other make the best gingerbread house they could. Each group was directly overseen by St Rose staff, with them ready to help students throughout the building process.

One group decorated the sides of their gingerbread house with differently colored “M&M’s” made out of construction paper. At the top of the house was a little chimney, and white trimming made out of paper plates. Also running along the sides of their house were giant candy canes propped up with colored tape.

Another gingerbread house had candy-cane swirl plates dotting its side. Towards the back were two little gingerbread men, and the house had a bunch of balloons covering the roof.

Bokuniewicz, who is also a fifth grade teacher at St Rose, said that she was happy and very fortunate to have her fifth grade students help her prepare for the big event. Seeing students throughout the grades come together for an event like this, she said, was “special.”

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Reporter Jenna Visca can be reached at jenna@thebee.com.