Fourth Grade Flipper: Yummy State Cookie...and Sales Galore!!

Now that Thanksgiving is over and most of my shopping is done (yay!), I wanted to take a minute to post about a fun activity we do in 4th grade right before Thanksgiving break. The teachers on my team started this tradition a long time ago and I am so glad that we continue it. Our local vo-tech students in the culinary arts program make HUGE sugar cookies in the shape of New York for the entire fourth grade.

This could work for any state and some states would be a much easier shape to make a cookie cutter for:) Our curriculum in 4th grade focuses on our state and we study geography in depth at the beginning of the year. When we decorate the cookies, we have them use edible items to mark the locations of various places and it is a great review. To avoid the chaos of passing out materials, I get everything ready in little cups to decorate the cookies with and I also have the cookies passed out on cardboard trays waiting with globs of frosting on them.

The students spread the frosting, then I post an overhead of the NYS map and we review the locations and what the edible items will represent on their cookies. We used:

M & M's for Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, NYS, and our hometown
mini chocolate chips for the Catskills and Allegheny Mountains
regular chocolate chips for the Adirondack Mountains
Hershey Kiss for highest peak, Mt. Marcy
Red Hot for state capital, Albany
blue icing for Hudson River, Mohawk River, Finger Lakes, local lake (we pass around the icing)

Here is a completed cookie:

I send them home with students with foil wrapped around the cardboard. I also have students raise their right hand and repeat after me, "I will not eat my cookie until I have showed it to an adult and told them the names of the places on my cookie. Then, I will eat it if my mom or dad say it is okay. I will only eat as much as they say I can because it is pretty big." (or something like that...they think it is so funny!).

Also, don't forget about the sales going on at Teacher's Notebook (Saturday thru Monday) and Teachers Pay Teachers (Monday and Tuesday)! My wish list is loaded with over 40 items!! It is like an addiction. Yikes! I have my little store participating in both of the sales too!