Dino Excavating
We have two very big dinosaur lovers in our house. Dino figurines, dino trucks, dino cartoons, you name it they love it. Last weekend when we were at the beach after I made my 100th mudball filled with a hidden rock, our 500th drippy castle and our 1,000 monster truck ramp, I decided to come up with an activity that combined a few of their favorite things.
To make the “dino fossils” I used the plaster of paris that I had in the basement from an old stepping stone activity, but you can also use sand (and put water in it), oobleck, or ice. You can find plaster of paris at a bunch of different stores, Michaels, Lowes, or even Target so scoop it up the next time you’re there!
To use the plaster grab a Tupperwear or a bowl, I used an aluminum pan so I could just toss it when we were done and then added one part plaster to two parts water and mixed it around so all the plaster dissolved. We have a bunch of Ltd Toob animals so I added in our dinosaur ones here and just pushed them into the mixture. The plaster needs to sit for a few hours, check the package for specifics, but I just left our overnight.
Once it’s set I brought the kids little tool set and our giant eye droppers out to the picnic table so we could start finding the fossils! They reallly REALLY enjoyed this part. We used the hammers, saws and screwdrivers to break the dinos out and then water and the giant eye droppers to clean them off. So cute!! I’m not sure my daughter would have been able to break through the plaster and get the animals out herself so when I do this activity again with her I’ll probably use ice instead and if you follow me on instagram you know babygirl loves to play with ice!
Supplies:
- Plaster of Paris
- Water
- Tupperware
- Figurines
- Kid tools
- Eye droppers
