Geography... the yummy way

Maps. Maps. Maps. We love our maps, but I gotta tell ya, sometimes the same old thing gets sorta dull. Sorta ho-hum. And extremely boring. After all, my two oldest boys have labeled a gazillion maps over the last few years-- maps of Egypt, maps of Mesopotamia, maps of Africa, maps of Europe, and on and on and on. And now that we're tackling the ever-growing young American nation (think late 1700s to the early 1800s), one more traditional paper map just didn't hold too much appeal.

So, we decided to try something new.

Something fun.

Something yummy.

We made one out of cookie dough!

Here's the super-easy skinny-- we rolled a tube of Pillsbury sugar cookie dough out on a baking sheet and baked it for 10 or 15 minutes... until it looked just right. Once it cooled sufficiently, we used a paper map as our guide and cut out the edges (on the right hand side) accordingly. Since we've been reading about Daniel Boone, the Wilderness Road, and the early stages of western expansion, we included the east coast states from South Carolina to Pennsylvania. We iced the giant cookie with vanilla frosting and then drew in the individual states with Betty Crocker Easy Decorator icing pens (they're awesome!).

Next, Bub labeled each state,

added a Skittle for the Cumberland Gap (a key passageway through the lower Appalachians which made the west accessible to pioneers), and drew in the Wilderness Road (the principal route used by thousands of settlers to reach Kentucky).

Then Noh-man iced the Atlantic Ocean,

and with Big Man's help, he added chocolate chunks to represent the Appalachian Mountains.

Not a perfect rendering, but a fun-- and extremely delicious-- one!

And we all reviewed our geography in the process~