Sand Dough Maps

As promised, by me to the boys, we made sand dough maps of Egypt after doing the map flip book. When we did the flip book the upside down terminology became apparent to the boys and they were confused by upper Egypt being in the south and lower Egypt being in the north. By making the sand dough map we were able to see that up, and down meant elevation not north and south. And that the rains fell upon the mountains in the south and flowed into the Nile river and down towards the Mediterranean sea.

 Before doing this project I was only familiar with salt dough maps, but I found a recipe for making sand dough which I thought would make the sand desert on our maps more realistic. The sand we used was fine and dark, it would be fun to use a coarser sand that is lighter in color. The dough comes out more rubbery than usual salt dough but it worked fine for our maps.

Once we had the sand dough made, we smooshed the dough onto the cardboard using the print out of a topographical map of Egypt to guide us. The dough has glue in it so it dried very quickly we had to work fast to stay ahead of the drying.

Zak is making a last minute check of the map before he finishes his map.

It took a day or so for the map to dry. Once it was dry we painted it. TJ has just mixed a nice brown for the sand. Once he finishes that it will dry before we add the green parts just on the edge of the Nile River.

Waaala! The project is finished. TJ's map is on the left followed by Zak's map and finally Max's map.