California Topographical Maps - 4th Grade

One of the first major Social Studies projects we did back in the Fall was make topographical maps of California, using homemade salt dough. The class learned about the different California regions and major landmarks as we made the maps together. This was a pretty extensive project. We spent an entire hour for an entire week working on these. I had two parent volunteers per day. I could have done it without them I suppose (so don't fret if you would like to do this project but don't usually get a lot of parent help), but boy did it make things easier to have parents helping out!

Here is a picture story of the events:

 Here is the Before. The key is to have students bring their own salt dough. It is a very easy recipe, and it saves a whole lot of time. We needed a lot of salt dough, so with each child bringing one batch, we were guaranteed to have enough. I made two extra batches for those students who forgot to bring dough or whose dough was too runny.

This is the progress after the second day. We did the Central Valley and mountain ranges on the first day, and then finished the coast and desert on the second day. Basically the way it works is that we have a map of California attached to a piece of cardboard. We then pressed the salt dough in small pieces directly onto the paper.

I tried as hard as possible to get students to be as accurate topographically as possible. We didn't include all mountain peaks of course, but we did include the top three Whitney, Shasta, Lassen and students were supposed to ensure that Whitney was the tallest peak on their map.

Here is a close-up of a topographical map. One big thing I graded for was that the Sierras were twice the size of the Coastal Ranges. This student did a good job of that, as well as placing his mountain peaks in the correct spot.

On the third and fourth day, we painted in the same order as we built: Central Valley first, then mountains, followed by the coast and desert. The reason we split it up is because you really want the salt dough to be completely dry. Otherwise it still shrinks and moves.

We painted the four regions in four different colors. All of them are pretty realistic with the exception of the coast. The different colors really help the students learn the different regions. After this activity, all of my students knew them and they still correctly refer to them months later.

Finally, on the last day, we labeled everything. This is the finished product. As you can see, there are some cracks in the painting because the dough was not completely dry. For next year, I think I am going to do the map building on Thursday/Friday and then the painting/labeling on Monday through Wednesday in order to give the dough more time to dry.


This project is what made me fall in love with teacher collaboration. As a first year teacher, I would have never attempted this project on my own because it seemed way too daunting. But my coworker (the other 4th grade teacher) has done this project for years, and she walked me through the process. And I loved it! Definitely doing it again next year and for many years to come. It is such a fun project and the students get so much out of it! It is also surprisingly easy.