The Teacher's CornerPuzzles and Activities
After discussing how archaeologists work, how they search for remains, how they must carefully excavate a site (with much detail here about a grid system, cataloguing information, and the characteristics of person, such as patience, persistence, attention to detail, etc.) we do the following activity.
I bake choc. chip cookies with an assortment of "items" in them such as carpet tacks, pennies, those silver decorative balls, nuts, etc. I stress to the children these are not edible! Each child receives a cookie and then must follow the directions on the worksheet (to follow). They also receive two toothpicks which becomes their excavating tools. The other supplies needed are colored pencils and a ruler.
The two page worksheet begins:
ARCHAEOLOGICAL DIG: Archaeology is the systematic recovery and study of the remains of human life at an excavation site. The chocolate chip cookie is the site of your dig, the items in your cookie are your remains of human life that you need to recover. Your only tools are two toothpicks. Remember, systematic recovery is a must. Good Luck!
Then the paper is divided in half lengthwise. On the left side is the following instruction: Initial view of the excavation site. (Top view) Use colored pencils. I then have a N at the top of the column, an S at the bottom, E or the right and W on the left.
(I then have the children pass around a black marker and make a dot on the cookie at the spot where they would like North to be. Then, that is the last part of the cookie to be excavated.) They place the cookie on the paper, trace it, keeping the black dot at North.
On the right half of the paper, they duplicate the drawing and I have again provided the N-S-E-W. This time, the directions read: Copy your cookie drawing over on this side of the paper. Grid you excavation before you begin to retrieve any remains left by your human ancestors. A grid of one half inch should be used.
On page two, there are three columns. The first is titled "Artifact #" The second is titled "Sketch". The third column is "Where found in the grid section. Observations" I then give an example under the heading. Under Artifact # I have # 101. Under sketch, I draw a partial choc. chip. Under where found and observations, I write Grid C-6, west end of excavation site, almost whole.
I have done this activity for about 6 years and my kids absolutely love it. I usually ask a couple of parents to bake edible cookies which the kids can eat when they are done. If you are not into baking, Peppridge Farm Chocolate Chunk Cookies work great for the activity. Then the kids can eat all the minute crumbs. I am able to spend a double period doing this (90 minutes). If I had to do it in half the time, I could provide the children with zip lock storage bags in which they could store their cookies.
Submitted by: Linda Sallee lsallee@email-removed
