Students build a "green" gingerbread house

Finn Deen-Lester, Sarah Mumford and Payton Schutte admire their gingerbread house

They were gingerbread houses unlike any others.  When five Americorps volunteers showed up at the Decorah Public Library recently, they helped students to build gingerbread houses with energy-saving features.

Green gingerbread building was an opportunity to get kids thinking about energy and what that means for their homes.  "We hope that the kids took with them some new ideas about where energy comes from, along with new and more efficient ways that energy can be used in and around the place they live," said Green Iowa AmeriCorps Education Coordinator Max Molzahn.