4Elementary School News

Lesson makes social studies a tasty treat!

Mr. Murray's and Mrs. Mahon's fourth grade classes wrapped up a social studies lesson on the geography of New York in a mouth-watering way. They made sugar cookie maps of New York State!

After learning about New York's major cities, mountains, bodies of water and border states, the students were were given cookie dough and asked to shape it into the outline of New York. After baking the cookie, the students frosted the Mohawk and Hudson Rivers and used chocolate chips to represent the Adirondack, Catskill and Taconic Mountains. They added gumdrops to mark the cities of Albany, Schenectady, Rochester, Syracuse, Buffalo, and New York City.  And of course, when the lesson was over—they ate their projects!

In addition to being fun, the project had a serious purpose.

"Students have different learning styles," said Mr. Murray. "Some absorb information listening to their teacher or reading a book. Other learn better by doing. This cookie/geography lesson is just another way to reinforce what we are learning in class—and it was tasty at the same time!"

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