Project: Peanut Butter and Jelly Geology

I love learning about fossils and they are often the topics of my books.  As a child in Minneapolis, my family used to go on rock and fossil collecting expeditions. I still remember climbing cliffs along the Mississippi river to collect chunks of limestone and the thrill of cracking them open.  If we were lucky, we would find inside the perfectly preserved skeleton of a creature that had lived millions of years earlier. Later, on a camping trip to the Grand Canyon, I remember learning how the many layers of earth exposed on the canyon walls had formed.

"Earth Sandwich" an edible demonstration of various layers of the Earth's crust

One of my all time favorite classroom projects is making  an “Earth Sandwich” as a model of the layers of the earth.  Each part of the sandwich represents a part of the Earth’s crust.  When you cut the sandwich in half, it is like looking at the walls of the Grand Canyon.  As you enjoy your Earth Sandwich, you are eating your way through time!
To make your sandwich, you will need:
   pumpernickel bread for coal
   rye bread for sandstone
   white bread for limestone
   peanut butter for dirt
   jelly for oil or tar
   raisins for boulders
   pretzel sticks for fossil bones
My recent books about fossils include Global Warming and the Dinosaurs and Giant Sea Reptiles of the Dinosaur Age.