Staircases made of peppermint wheels, roof shingles made out of Chex and pretzel sticks, beams made out of candy canes and an abundance of decapitated Sour Patch Kids.

That was the scene last week as roughly 13 students from Yelm Middle School decorated a large gingerbread house they submitted for last weekend’s gingerbread decorating contest at Christmas in the Park.

But this gingerbread house wasn’t your typical A-frame structure.

Students at Yelm Middle School decorated a giant gingerbread replica of the new Yelm Middle School slated to be under construction early next year.

The students took about five days to work on the project, with finishing touches completed on Friday, Dec. 6.

Wendy Bennett, art instructor at Yelm Middle School, supervised the students’ project and was the sole baker who measured, mixed, baked and assembled the structure for the kids to decorate.

Bennett said she’s not the best person to trust around baking, but she cared enough to dedicate 30 hours over the Thanksgiving break to assemble the base for her students and the project.

“I didn’t bake before this. I burned slice-and-bake cookies,” she said.

And that dedication paid off. Not only did the class decorate a colorful and unique building, but it also took home first place in the contest’s group category.

The idea for this project came from Assistant Principal Mark Bowden.

“He walked in on my prep period and said, ‘Hey, you should do this,’” Bennett recalled.

She said she accepted the challenging task and procured a group of student volunteers to help decorate the project this week.

The Wednesday before Christmas in the Park, in the midst of decorating the half candy-covered gingerbread building, kids patiently took turns focusing on their respective landscaping and construction duties. Some kids, on the cusp of disinterest, took turns daring each other to eat wafers spread with edible metallic-looking spray.

Obviously, the sugar rush was starting to kick in.

“I think it’s helped their imagination. Their focus? Not so much,” Bennett said.

On his way out for the day, band teacher Matt Kuka stopped by the room to check on the progress of the gingerbread house. Kuka commented positively on how the structure was coming along.

The group’s project had been the talk of the school, Kuka said.

“I think she’s had a lot of people come in and talk about it. I think we’re all excited for the new school,” he said.

Kuka said it has been great to see the kids take a creative interest in the gingerbread house and new school, especially since a number of the middle schoolers won’t ever get a chance to attend class in the new building, which should be completed around September 2021.

“This is something pretty far out in the future for them,” Kuka said.

Bennett said she’s been very surprised with how organized the students have been in coming up with ideas to decorate the building. She said many of the students started brainstorming creative ideas that would make the school stand out.

“Everybody was polarized. I have a group of girls that are working on trees — the tree team,” Bennett said. “It was a blank canvas and they just went to the races.”

The new Yelm Middle School is expected to be two stories tall and cover 100,000 square feet on the current campus. This gingerbread replica is only a fraction of that size at about 5 square feet.

But don’t let that number fool you into thinking they took any liberties with the details.

The structure is fairly faithful to the original digital renderings and layouts that were published by BCRA Design earlier this summer. Plus, the students have definitely added their own unique holiday spin to the project.

Windows are lined delicately with white frosting; the roof is covered with a jumbled myriad of pretzel sticks, graham crackers, Chex, gumdrops and Nilla Wafers; the decapitated heads of Sour Patch Kids line the windows of the student wing, with a choir of singers located in the covered area on the building’s flank; and the school’s colors, black and yellow, line the gutters and trace a giant “YMS” made out of frosting.

Bennett said she made it a priority to let the students go full force with decorating, adding that she’s let the student’s judgment drive the project.

“I’ve already told them I’m not doing anything to it,” she said. “What’s finished will be there on Saturday.”

Despite living in the area for the last two years, Bennett said she’s never been to Christmas in the Park.

“I’ve heard there are some really amazing (gingerbread houses) that people put months into,” she said.

And some of that competition left a few of the students wondering if they could take home accolades for their five-day-old project.

“If we don’t win, we’ll definitely get a solid second place,” said sixth-grader Waylon Hepp, who helped with the roof. “And if we don’t get third, I’ll give all this candy away.”

Kylie Hansen, a sixth-grade student who helped decorate the gingerbread trees with green frosting, was a little more confident in the team.

“Who else is going to do a huge school?” she asked, holding a red Sour Patch Kid fashioned with white frosting to look like Santa Claus.

Madison Coleman, another sixth-grader, said she’s not sure if they’ll win, but regardless she had fun decorating it.

“It looks a little crazy. And like Ms. Bennett said, there are people who have worked for two months,” Coleman said. “But it was fun.”

Charlotte Weber, an eighth grader, had other things on her mind.

“My favorite part, honestly, was eating candy,” she said.