Wednesday, October 21, 2020

Archaeology + Paleontology Layer Cake

Do an archaeological dig through a layer cake.  Great for homeschool history lessons, or archeaology or paleontology parties.  Eat your way through history!


Don't have a yard suitable to doing fun archaeology digs in?   Well, then just try layer cake!

I can't claim to have come up with this brilliant idea.   That honor goes to amazing homeschool mom Megan Evans who made the archaeology/paleontology cake below, and graciously allowed me to share her photos of it here.

She didn't have a yard so she baked "artifacts" into a layer cake to "excavate" later.   That is the tastiest archeology dig I've ever heard of.
 

This shows the top of the cake with green frosting , a toy tent, and campfire scene.

On the top we have a scrumptious campsite.

 

This shows the layers of the cake.

Then underneath we see the layers.

I like how she made the layers from

different color cake mix.   


In this layer you can see how they made cut outs and placed tiny plastic sun glasses, a fishing rod, and a silver item in the cake.

 
The top layer had some modern items.


This picture shows a skeleton...at it's feet is a ring.


In the middle layer, a grave with grave goods.


(Love the use of the ring as a crown!)


This picture shows the bottom layer of cake with two dinosaurs inserted into cut outs.

And for the bottom layer, moving from

archaeology to paleontology, 

we have dinosaurs.

This is a project that would be so worth the sugar rush.  If you didn't want to eat through all that cake at once I could see gradually "excavating" it over several days.   For older kids you could have them string the top area off like a real archeology dig and diagram where they found things in the cake.  Such fun!   Thanks Megan for sharing this great idea!


TRIVIA  

  • Archaeology and archeology are both correct spellings of the word in the US.   To learn more, read this. ) 
  • Paleontology and Archeology, while they overlap some, are different.  Learn more here.

 

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