Dinosaur Excavation Site

Using simple and cheap ingredients from the pantry to create an inviting dinosaur fossil excavation site.

Searching for dinosaur fossils.

What you need:

- Salt dough dinosaur fossils (mix 1/2 cup salt with 1 cup plain or all purpose flour and then gradually add 1/2 cup water until a nice dough forms, push in the small toy dinosaurs about half way and remove them, refrigerate for 15 minutes, then microwave for 20 second blasts with rest periods in-between until the dough hardens)

- plastic storage tub filled with breadcrumbs

- selection of small toy dinosaur fossils

- magnifying glasses

- large paintbrushes

How it works:

We started by making the salt dough fossils (see instructions above). My son enjoyed rolling out the dough and choosing which dinosaurs to push in. He added his large T-Rex toy to the process and insisted on feeding him with salt dough.

Making the salt dough fossils.

Lots of roars during the fossil making.

To make the excavation site I simply tipped a few bags of store purchased breadcrumbs into the plastic storage tub and hid the dinosaur fossils and some toy dinosaur skeletons. My son and his friend enjoyed using the brushes to sweep off the 'dirt and dust' to find the dinosaur fossils. They talked about the types of dinosaur they found (most names were made up!) and then enjoyed hiding the fossils for each other to find.

Searching for the fossils.

Sweeping away the 'dirt and dust'.

This was a cheap and easy small world tub to make. It also got a second lease of life the following week when we used the breadcrumbs to make a construction site with my son's trucks and diggers.