Ever since we started school a few weeks ago the kids have been asking about when we’ll make Cookie Dough Maps. I tried this last year when we studied ancient Egypt, as an alternative to the “Let’s-keep-it-forever-mom!” salt dough maps. Little did I know I was starting a tradition.
A tradition that is not, let’s be honest, for the health-conscious mom. In order to get a platform large enough to do anything, I had to make what was supposed to be 48 cookies. Each child got almost 1/4 of the recipe (with a little bit cut off the sides for mom and dad!). This was math they enjoyed doing….how many cookies will you get if you eat 1/4 of 48? Suffice it to say, they weren’t allowed to finish eating it all in one sitting.
Last year we tried making a country-specific map of Egypt. This year we’ve been reviewing geography terms, so I told them that their map could be whatever they wanted it to be (a real place or make-believe) but that it had to show several geographical features, such as rivers, oceans, mountains, etc. My 9 year old enjoyed making several “knobs” out of mini marshmallows (which is smaller than a knoll, by the way, which is smaller than a hill, which is smaller than a mountain…)
To keep it simple, I purchased ready-made chocolate chip cookie dough at the store (2 packages) and pressed it out into a large square baking dish. When the cookie bars were finished, I cut out large squares and carefully gave one to each child on a plate. They were also given bowls of colored frosting (yellow for sand, blue for water, green for grass) and a couple of squirt bottles of frosting. We used M&M’s, mini marshmallows, and chocolate chips for land features. One child used frosting to stack marshmallows into a large mountain. My 7 year old’s comment sums it up nicely: “This is 3,000 calories worth of map”.
