My kids love to eat, so what better way to get them interested in geography than to tell them they can eat a map and it will taste like a cookie because, well, it is a cookie.
Sure, you could do one of those wonderful salt-dough maps that the kids can paint after it dries, but then you have to keep it and store it and my kids are the type who would never, ever want to part with such a thing. This usually leads to me smuggling it into the trash lovingly packing it away in the basement after it becomes a dust-covered blob and they forget about it in a few months.
So for our unit study on Australia, we went with the cookie map! Everybody wins!
Lots of flour sprinkled liberally kept the dough from sticking to the map.
All you need: Basic sugar cookie recipe, map covered in a sheet protector or laminated, tubes of icing, chocolate chips for mountains, sprinkles or candy or whatever you have on hand to mark major cities and landmarks.
After rolling the dough flat, we placed it over the map and trimmed around the edges. Lifting up the dough and peeking underneath guided us in our trimming and shaping.
After the cookies baked and cooled, I gave the kids tubes of icing to mark the states and territories of Australia. Not a fan of the gel icing, by the way. It’s runny. Next time, we’ll use regular sugar icing. We used chocolate chips for mountains and little round candies for major cities.
Map Resources
The map we used to for general shape and to guide us about territories and states was free from Activity Village UK.
The book we used as a guide to the geographical features of the land is Macmillan First Atlas
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This is a great idea! I have the same issue with salt dough maps…it’s so hard to find a place to put that sort of thing!
What a really great idea! I want to do this with my girls!
Did you find that making the cookie bigger you had to bake it longer? About how long? I have tried to make those really BIG chocolate chip cookies and always had a hard time figuring out how long to bake them for.
Theresa,
I left the cookies in the oven about 2 minutes longer than the recipe called for. That seemed to be when the edges were browning a bit and they looked right to me.
Julie
We’ll have to try this. M made a salt dough map for our Polar Animals unit, but one of our idiot dogs ate it before she got the the painting stage. At least it’d be the kids eating the cookie version!
I bet that dog was thirsty for a long time after that!
Edible cartography! I LOVE it!
Cartography! That was the word I was looking for but couldn’t think of. Thank you, Kristen.
I love this idea – my 6 year old is studying the polar regions right now and this would be such a fun, hands on way to really feel and see the geography! I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE your blog!! Thank you for all the fabulous ideas that you share…
Thank YOU for such nice compliments. Have fun with your polar cookies.
Fabulous and yes love that storage is a non issue