Year 4 have made their own maps of South America using salt dough. It was a long process over two days and involved lots of skills! First we looked at maps of South America in the atlas and thought about what the atlas can teach us. Then we traced the shape of South America using tracing paper.
We had to be very careful to make sure we were being accurate cartographers! Then we traced over our tracing on the back and then rubbed that lead (graphite!) off onto a sheet of blue card.
Mr Penberthy made a lot of mess at the back of the room with flour, water and salt to make the salt dough but once it was ready we put some on our card and used it to model the shape of the continent.
We looked carefully at the maps to make sure our models were accurate representations – the mountain ranges were shown by making the dough thicker so it was raised up. The cocktail sticks were then added to become labels the next day. We left the salt dough to dry overnight.
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Today we painted our dry salt dough models. We chose to either paint them based on the countries of South America or on the landscape based on one of two maps in the atlas.
We really enjoyed this activity and it has helped us to learn the geography of South America. Here are some pictures of our finished models:
