Creator’s Craft Challenge #1: Gingerbread Bridge
The whole point of Creator’s Craft Crate is to help kids (and adults) learn by creating — through our kits, upcoming curriculum, and now these challenges!
Why Challenges?
Motivation through competition: Friendly competition can inspire people to push themselves.
Learning from each other: You can see others’ project submissions, and seeing how others approach the same problem differently helps us to learn. A shared experience, like working on the same project, lets us learn from each others’ triumphs and mistakes, and consider solutions we never would have before!
Building community: Especially for homeschooled kids, these competitions offer a chance to connect with peers who share similar interests.
The Gingerbread Bridge Competition Overview
How To Participate:
Build a “Gingerbread Bridge”
Made from any foods (not just gingerbread or graham crackers!)
Test Your Bridge’s Strength
Take a video placing full water bottles into a grocery bag secured to the bridge until it breaks.
Submit Your Entry
Post your video to social media using both hashtags:
#CreatorsCraftChallenge1and#GingerbreadBridge
(This allows all participants can see each others’ awesome work, and makes your friends want to do the next challenge too!)Fill out a submission form - This helps me to make sure that I don’t accidentally miss any of your videos.
Not comfortable with social media? You can submit a video privately through the submission form.
Win a Shoutout!
I will feature several of my favorite builds in a highlights video on the Clean Your Craft YouTube Channel for:
Strongest Bridge
Creative Use of Food Materials
Beautiful Builds
Spectacular Destruction
Other Awesome Stuff!
If you don’t get featured, don’t worry, you can try again with the next challenge.
If you don’t want attention through Social Media, you’ll still get a personalized email shoutout explaining what I loved about your build.
Bridge Rules:
Materials:
Bridge must be built entirely from food (examples: crackers, chocolate, candy, uncooked pasta, cookies, etc.)
Dimensions:
Must span a 2-foot (24-inch) unsupported gap.
Maximum height: 10 inches.
Maximum width: 5 inches.
Design Requirements:
Must include at least one lane for a die-cast car (like Hot Wheels or Matchbox).
The lane must:
Be flat enough for a car to roll across with a light finger push.
Have side rails to keep the car from rolling off.
Who Can Participate?
Everyone is welcome!
While designed for school-age kids, anyone — individuals, families, or class groups — can join.
Builds will be judged considering:
Age of builders
Number of builders
Host your own mini-competition!
Families or classes can hold their own bridge competitions and submit a group video.
The main goal?
Have fun, practice problem-solving, and strengthen your problem solving and making skills!
How to Submit:
Build a bridge that fits the specs above. Make sure that it fits the die-cast car requirement.
You don’t have to provide evidence of the bridge conforming to the specs, but please make sure that it does.
Film a quick presentation of your bridge. ( ideally 40 seconds or less)
Make sure to say the following as part of the presentation:
Your Name as well as the name(s) of the other builders (if any).
Your favorite features about the bridge you made. These can be structural features, aesthetic features, or even reasons why you think the broken pieces will taste good.
If your bridge was build by a group, just pick one spokesperson to present the bridge. If you built it as a family, let one of the kids present the bridge.
Film your destructive test of the bridge.
With the camera rolling, add water bottles to the bridge until it breaks. Use full 16.9 ounces (500 mL) water bottles. If you don’t have this size on hand, you can use any size, just state the volume of the bottles being used so that we know how much weight the bridge held
You can place the water bottles directly on the bridge or hang them from lightweight bags (like a disposable or re-usable grocery bag).
Keep the weight relatively evenly distributed over the length of the bridge. Add weight to the center first, then move to the sides.
Post a video to YouTube or Instagram Reels that includes both the presentation and testing of the bridge. (Or send an email to cleanyourcraft@gmail.com if you don’t want the video on social media.)
The total video should ideally be shorter than 5 minutes
Include both hashtags in your post caption:
🔖#CreatorsCraftChallenge1
🔖#GingerbreadBridgeIf you want to include other things like a timelapse or pictures of building the bridge, you can, but it is not required.
Fill out this Submission Form
The submission deadline is May 18th 2025. I will post the shoutout video of my favorite entries on the YouTube Channel on May 30th. Subscribe to the Channel to get notifications for when the video is posted.