Edible USA

We had a really fun geography experience this weekend. The idea is
not my own, it comes from an article in Home Education Magazine
(Nov.-Dec.2007) by Audrey M. Smith, titled "Incredible Edible Maps."
We hand-drew outlines of the US, made chocolate chip cookie dough
without the chips, and the kids formed the dough into a giant map of
the US. After it was baked, we filled in the details: blue frosting
lines for rivers and lakes, candy kisses for the Rocky Mountains,
chocolate chips for the Appalachians, gummy snakes for the desert,
gummy fish for coastlines. circles and stars cut out of gum drops for
towns and capitals we wanted to mark, potatoes carved out of tootsie
rolls for Idaho, candy corn for Iowa, Nebraska and the Dakotas, gummy
bear heads atop chocolate chips for Mt.Rushmore, etc. Use your
imagination. To make it big enough, we removed a tray from the oven,
covered it with aluminum foil, and formed the map directly on it. We
foil-covered Florida and other fragile points to avoid burning. It
needed to bake for 15-20 minutes.

It was so much fun that we have decided to do one for our study on
South America, and then maybe for Europe and Asia and Africa and
Australia and Guatamala and Cote d'Ivoire and Burkina Faso and Germany
and...