Cookie Star Chart

My oldest mentioned to me, he was kind of sad we'd missed the "Star Signs" presentation at the planetarium, on our visit to the museum. He's been thumbing through Robin Kerrod's The Book of Constellations, and has apparently picked up a passing interest in astronomy.

I bought the book for him when he was much younger, and I had mapped out the constellations of the northern hemisphere on his bedroom ceiling.

We've since moved from that house though, and with more babies underfoot, it hasn't been a project I was anxious to take on again, so his ceiling has remained bare. I did think we could print out a star chart, to take out with us at night, though. I found one I liked, here, and printed it.

And, as it's been a while since we've done a larger, cookie project, we decided to reproduce it, for a snack time treat.

I made up two batches of sugar cookie dough - one chocolate, and one vanilla, but dyed yellow.

We patted the chocolate out into a circle, roughly twice as large as our printed chart, so we would have plenty of room to work. Then, we used tiny blobs of the yellow dough, to map out the stars.

It was a little overwhelming for a 13 year old, so I made it easier, by marking the spots for stars, with a tooth pick.

I won't kid you, the marking the dough process was tedious - but it was soooo much easier on the arms, than sticking all those little, glow-in-the-dark, stars to the ceiling. And, it gave us plenty of time to talk. I was surprised at how much knowledge about the stars, and Greek mythology he's picked up, on his own, from books, and (grin) video games.

Once we had all the stars covered (or at least, all we could fit), we baked our cookie for 12 minutes at 350 degrees.

Then, when it was cool, I added in some gel frosting lines, just to make the constellations stand out.

I labeled, as you can see at the top of this post - so feel free to print it, and take it outside (in the northern hemisphere) with you tonight :) Really, you might want to print a more accurate chart, like the one I linked above. Just take it outside, face north, and turn the chart, so the appropriate season is on the bottom, and gaze away.

It's great to be a homeschooler.