Cookie Map of Egypt

Katie is studying ancient Egyptian history right now and in the interest of making it more "hands-on" for her, we've joined a co-op at our church. We've been part of the co-op for a long time, but we've not done history with them until now.

I was in charge of this week's craft project so I had all the kids make maps of ancient Egypt out of cookie dough. Katie and I made one at home for practice, then we made one again at co-op so the pictures look different as I used some photographs from each session.

Each child started out with one full tube of sugar cookie dough. They pressed each one out into a 10x6 inch rectangle as if it were clay or play dough.

We used toothpicks to outline where we wanted land formations to be. Then we outlined the Mediterranean Sea with a blue gel.

And filled it in with blue icing.

We used Twizzlers to outline the Red Sea. Although the Red Sea isn't actually red, there is a seasonal algae there which is red in color. I thought the Twizzlers outline might help all the kids remember that that's the Red Sea as opposed to some other body of water.

After filling in the Red Sea with blue icing, we drew the Nile River with blue gel icing including the Nile Delta in lower Egypt. Then we discussed how the Nile River flooded every year and we used blue sprinkles to show the flooding of the Nile.

Of course when the Nile floods, it waters everything along the edges, so we then used green sprinkles to represent the crop growth after the floods.

Next, we used some gold sprinkles to represent the Western Desert and the Libyan Desert.

We used peanut butter flavored chips to represent pyramids. I didn't have any sprinkles which could have represented crops growing, so some of the kids just used stars because they are colorful like flowers. And really, wouldn't we all grow stars if we could?

Amazingly, a neighbor had given me some cow shaped sprinkles a while back and we used those to represent the Egyptian cattle which would have thrived along the Nile.

(I don't know why that previous sentence decided to do it's own thing as far as color and linking go, but I can't get it to change and who am I to thwart the desires of the alphabet to be flamboyant?)

We used a Hershey's kiss for Mt Sinai. One of the kids came up with the idea of putting a teddy bear shaped sprinkle on top to represent Moses. One of the younger kids wanted to know if I had any sprinkles in the shape of the Ten Commandments. Then another child came up with the idea of parting the Red Sea with a finger. All the other kids followed suit. They are so creative!

The result is a massive amount of sugar.

The topography of Egypt will change when you bake it, but that makes it even more fun.

Then you can eat it and by the time you wake up from that sugar coma,

it will be time to study ancient China!