Feast your eyes on this: Amazing gingerbread replicas of well-known Wichita buildings
Wichita’s iconic buildings have a new sugary sweetness about them but it’s temporary.
Kelly Truby and Liz Roberts’ Trinity Academy fifth-grade students spent the past two weeks making gingerbread versions of well-known buildings and attractions in Wichita. They included Century II, the Sedgwick County Courthouse, Koch Arena, Friends University, the Orpheum Theatre, Riverfront Stadium and Nifty Nut House to name a few.
This is the seventh year Truby has done this project and every time she is pleasantly surprised.
“It’s just incredible to see the creativity that takes place,” she said. One student put lights inside the Epic Center and the roof of the Old Mill Tasty Shop can be lifted to reveal the interior.
Inside the classroom there was a lot of on-going discussion about scale, architecture, math and science. It was up to the students and their family to complete the project together at home. Many of them visited the buildings and photographed them before they began.
One group even looked at blueprints of Exploration Place to get it just right. The highest structure is the Epic Center created by Caleb Tran and it is 2.5 feet tall.
There were also much talk about materials the students could use that would work best.
Century II was made with a disposable cake carrier as a round base. Oops. “The secret is out!” Truby said. The structures are made with a lot of hot glue, icing and cardboard backing.
And while the rigid backing makes it more durable than most gingerbread houses, it is still vulnerable to some of the same things that a traditional house would be.
Truby asked a student what happened to the top of a tree that was missing: “Oh, my sister bit it off.”
All 30 buildings are currently on display at Trinity Academy’s Lower School. “The whole building smells sugary. It’s just wonderful,” Truby said.
