Wednesday, September 8, 2010

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.

12 comments:

Unknown said...

MMMMMMMMMmmmm!! Yummy!!!!
What a fun idea, too.
We painted those stars on the boys' ceiling in our old house.

all 3 of them love astronomy and Ki likes Mythology- we'll have to add this to our activities.

Michelle said...

That's great!!!
What a fantastic idea!
And good job on that, by the way!

Phyllis said...

Another incredible idea. I have also done the constellations on the ceiling thing, but somethng llke this would never occured to me. You are so creative. Keep coming up with them!

Unknown said...

OK, if I didn't make it known before, I believe it's now "official:"

You are the COOLEST Mom EVER!!!

An Almost Unschooling Mom said...

Wonder Mom - Thanks, but I think my own mom still holds that title :)

Christy Killoran said...

Wow, you are a great mom. This is fantastic. I am so impressed.

Joyful Learner said...

You are so creative but now I'm curious to meet your mom too! I don't think I would eat that cookie..maybe put it behind a case and store it as a permanent display!

We did the glow in the star stickers but it was a lot of work (arms hurt) so we did a random type of thing. Would have loved the actual constellations on the ceiling but it's still beautiful as is!

An Almost Unschooling Mom said...

Joyful Learner - I wondered if T would have any trouble tearing into it - but he happily broke it up, and dished it out. There's not much left but crumbs now :)

Debbie said...

A great idea, and what a wonderful project to work on and to spend that one on one time with your son.

Natalie PlanetSmarty said...

You never seize to amaze me. Seriously, you should think about "teaching through baking" book :)

Ticia said...

That looks so cool.

And yes those glow in the dark stickers take forever to stick on.

Unknown said...

[regarding Your Comment]
I will be using the same theme for a title for today's blog.