Making Graham Cracker Sukkahs is a Fun Sukkot Activity for kids.  Similar in concept to gingerbread houses, these are easy to construct and fun to decorate.  And this project is suitable for a wide range of ages, from the early years right up through Mom and Dad.  Preschoolers can probably build their own, with help.  Toddlers can help decorate a sukkah that someone else has already built.

(If you’re currently thinking, “what is Sukkot?” It’s one of the annual celebrations God instituted in the Old Testament, and is both essentially a harvest celebration, and a commemoration of the Israelites’ time in the wilderness.  You can read more about it here.)

Supplies Needed for Your Graham Cracker Sukkahs

You will need:

• graham crackers
• peanut butter or other nut or seed butter (or frosting, if you don’t care about the sugar)
• pretzel sticks (the little ones, not the ones that are thick like cigars)
• fruit for decorating (we used freeze-dried)

We chose to make ours with nut butter and fruit to keep it somewhat healthy.  If you don’t care about that, you can use frosting and candy as your decorations.  I needed to be gluten-free when we did this project, so we used Quinn pretzel sticks and Smoreables graham crackers.

Constructing the Sukkah

For each sukkah, you will need a whole graham cracker “sheet” (the thing constructed of four rectangles) plus a little extra, a handful of pretzel sticks, and some nut butter (or frosting).

For the sides of the sukkah, break the graham cracker sheet in half so you have two squares.  Also break off one additional rectangle from a second graham cracker sheet, and if necessary, break it off a little shorter so it’s roughly equal in length to your pretzel sticks.

Using peanut butter as “glue,” attach the skinny piece to the two sheets to form a lower-back portion of the sukkah.  It should currently  be open in the front, open on the top, and open at the top half of the back.

Now, continuing to use peanut butter as “glue,” attach pretzel sticks as “bars” across the top of the sukkah.  There should be spaces in between.  It should look like this:

(We had to improvise a little because the Smoreables are a weird shape, which is why you can we’ve “glued” a couple together for each side.  You can make whatever you have work; just look at the pictures here to see what you’re basically going for.)

Decorating the Graham Cracker Sukkahs: A Fun Sukkot Activity for Kids of All Ages

Decorating is the really fun part — even for the kids who might have been a little too young to do the building part of the project.

Continuing to use nut butter as “glue,” attach dried fruits as decorations wherever and however you like.  Ours happen to be freeze-dried blueberries and strawberries from Thrive Life, but you can use whatever you like.  Raisins, dried cherries, etc.  (Freeze-dried strawberries are fun because they’re bright.)

A Fun Sukkot Activity to Keep Little Hands Busy

Although I wouldn’t recommend trying to have meaningful conversation while you’re actually constructing these, because you’ll likely keep having to interrupt yourself to give instructions, once everyone is busy decorating, little hands will be busy — which can make little ears more receptive.

If your family has decided to use special readings during Sukkot, for instance, choosing to read the law, this might be a good time to do that. Preschoolers and those in the early years of elementary school can spread peanut butter and stick fruit while Mom or Dad reads.  (Older kids probably can listen without the aid of Sukkah-building, and may choose to also build, or may assist younger siblings, or do some or all of the reading on Mom and Dad’s behalf.)

Or it can be a good time to put some praise music on in the background.