Fun with Dinosaurs {Make a Small Dinosaur World and Salt Dough Fossils}

   

Dinosaur week(s) has been lots of fun and the best part for me was the day Little One spent in the garden playing with a friend  - ALL DAY - digging for dino fossils. The fossils were some white shells we found on a walk on the beach a long time ago. I hid them in the ground, gave them each a spade and a paint brush, and I demonstrated how to be a Paleontologist (well best I could). After they got tired of looking for the seashell "fossils", they turned to the interesting bits of rock in the garden and then requested hammers, so that some hammering could happen too.

Perhaps it's too wet or cold where you are though to play outside, so I thought it would be fun to share and create a small indoor dinosaur world... for the indoor Paleontologists ;). 

I actually made this scene on my patio table, so technically it's still outdoors, but you can easily duplicate this indoors of course. 

(I must apologise for the very distracting table cloth.)

I used two cardboard boxes and connected them with a long piece of brown felt. I thought the sides of the boxes kept the scene fairly contained, which is helpful for tidying up purposes, and the sides also created a barrier for the dinosaurs to climb over. 

The following things were used to create the scene:

Pebbles/River stones collected from beach walks

White stones (can be purchased at a garden centre)

Small river stones (purchased from The Crazy Store for R20)

Shells that looked like fossils found at the beach

Blue felt to make a dam 

Home-made salt dough fossils (recipe below)

Egg boxes

Home-made volcano

Waterfall made from bubble wrap

Cave made from a tissue box

 I forgot to add greenery, but that's pretty simple, as all the greenery you need can be found in your garden. I added the big egg boxes, which Little One painted, to be the scary volcanic rocks around the erupting volcano. The dinosaurs had to tread rather carefully when crossing the perilous volcanic rock. :) The egg boxes also allowed me to create some height, as they are nice to stack on top of each other. 

The volcano was made from a foam cup, which I covered with brown felt as best I could. I then cut a red square and folded it over the top and glued it on. It took me a few minutes to make it. (A glue gun does come in very handy here.) 

The cave was created from a tissue box. I added some recycled biscuit box cardboard to the outside of it.

The recipe for our salt dough fossils is as follows:

2 cups of flour

1 cup of salt

1 cup of water

Mix it together and then roll it out to make a nice smooth dough.

Once you have made the fossils (or anything else for that matter), put it on a baking tray and bake for a few hours at 180 degrees Celsius.

Even though the children are very ready to move on to a new theme, I have decided to share one more dinosaur post, so hold on tight...it's a goodie.

S is for The Very Busy Spider

When I planned these "S" activities, I completely forgot about this post in my archives. Do go have a look if you want some more spider ideas. :)

Do you know the book The Very Busy Spider by Eric Carle? It's a great book with lovely illustrations.  In the hard cover version, the spider web is raised, so it's fun to feel how it gets bigger and bigger in the story. It's a very simple story line, so it's an ideal book for a young child. 

I've seen so many lollipop spiders on the internet and this inspired our very busy spider lollipop . For the head you need one green pipe cleaner. For the legs cut two orange pipe cleaners in half. Simply wrap the pipe cleaners around the lollipop stick to make the spider.  The eyes and mouth were cut out from felt and glued on.

Our very busy spider also got her own real life web. Little one punched some holes in a paper plate and was then supposed to thread the string through the holes to make the web. I was told, however,  quite emphatically, that he doesn't like threading, so I did end up doing it myself. If you can get your little one to do the threading, it's really a great fine motor activity. 

We also found some Very Busy Spider activities at Making Learning Fun.

I thought it would be fun to build a "S'" with little spiders. The "S" we used was printed from Confessions of a Homeschooler. If you go to this link and look for a-z lowercase worksheets, you will find all the letters of the alphabet ready to print. Thank you Heather!

Our last bit of spider fun was a small spider building station (Idea via Fantastic Fun and Learning). To make the play dough, I used my favourite recipe - no stove required! Here it is:

1 cup flour
2 Tbs cream of tarter
1 Tbs vegetable oil
1/2 cup of granulated salt

Add some essence for a nice aroma (orange, almond, peppermint)

Mix all the ingredients in a bowl and then add a cup of boiling water. Stir until combined and turn it out onto a floured board and knead until smooth. Colour can be added to the boiling water or at the kneading stage. Just a tip - wear gloves when kneading - the food colouring does stain your skin and it isn't very easy to clean off. Store your dough in an airtight container. 

To make black play dough, I combined blue, green and red food colouring. I kept adding and mixing it until I was happy with the colour. 

Here are some more fun Spider crafts on the blog:

Bottle Top Crafts

Spider Party

Till next time, have fun.

PS. Linking to The Weekly Kids Co-Op, For the Kids Fridays @ Sun Scholars and Kids Activities Blog.

Play Dough Cookies (made with bottle tops)

You do know how I love bottle tops... :)

When we went away for a few days in the holidays, I knew it being Winter, that  we would possibly be spending a fair amount of time indoors. I packed the play dough (as I usually do), as I knew that this could entertain both kiddos if need be. I also packed an ocean themed bottle top memory match game I had made awhile back. 

Little One and I got stuck into the play dough one afternoon and I realized that we could stamp some sea creatures with our bottle tops. As we got stamping, the idea of cookies evolved. Make a small round ball (quite tricky for Little One to do and good for those hands) and then stamp it. Voila! A plate of sea creature cookies. They are pretty don't you think?

PS. Link to the bottle top memory match here and to the play dough recipe here.

Design a Ring

Recognise these? The little plastic seals under the lid and that you pull out of a big juice box. They look like plastic rings, don't you think?

Add some play dough and beads and you can transform them into these...ooh la la

These "designer" rings were created by some girlfriends (aged 10 and 12), who came over for a lovely play date. Wouldn't this make a super activity for a little girl's birthday party?

Till next time :)

PS. Shared at

 For the Kids Friday @ Sun Scholars

Play Dough Activities Link Up @ The Imagination Tree 

Mini Designer Bottle Top and Play Dough Cakes

Bottle tops + play dough = cakes...who would have thought?

These mini cakes were inspired by some very clever creations I saw at  Anne Farrell's blog. I thought of trying to make these with glue, but then realised that it would require some really fine precision gluing and both children wouldn't necessarily be in the mood for such sticky fingers. So play dough to the rescue :).

I have tried a few play dough recipes, but this is definitely one of my all time favourites. It is soooo easy to make and the best part - no stove required!

To create the soft icing colours, I added very little food colouring to the dough. The yellow was our "custard" filling and we used deep purple as our chocolate icing, because I (unfortunately) forgot to make some brown coloured dough. To make a soft chocolatey color, you can simply add a little bit of cocoa to the recipe.

The little beads make for pretty sprinkles to decorate the cakes - don't forget to also have some red ones to add as cherries or strawberries :). 

Wouldn't these make such a sweet addition to a small doll's tea party?

 

The play dough recipe, found via The Mother Lode. 

1 cup flour
2 Tbs cream of tarter
1 Tbs vegetable oil
1/2 cup of granulated salt
Add some essence for a nice aroma (orange, almond, peppermint)

Mix all the ingredients in a bowl and then add a cup of boiling water. Stir until combined and turn it out onto a floured board and knead until smooth. Colour can be added to the boiling water or at the kneading stage. I divide the batch in half and add the colouring at the kneading stage. When you divide it in half, there is enough for two nice hand-sized balls of dough. Just a tip - wear gloves when kneading - the food colouring does stain your skin and it isn't very easy to clean off. Store your dough in an airtight container. 

If you have never made play dough before, I really want to encourage you to give it a go. For many years I used store-bought dough and I have always disliked the artificial and overpowering smell. This dough is really wonderful :). 

Till next time...have fun!

Sharing at:
Show and Tell @ ABC and 123 
For the Kids Friday @ Sun Scholars 
Kid's Co-op 
Too Cute Tuesday @ Funky Polkadot Giraffe 

Play Dough Activities Link Up @ The Imagination Tree 

Chocolate Play Dough!

 

I have never much liked store bought play dough. I think it's the smell of it that mainly puts me off. But year after year I have continued to buy it, never considering making any of my own. I have always thought that there would be far too much work involved. How wrong could I be! I first tried a no-cook recipe, as I tend to avoid the stove at all costs, but it wasn't very successful. I then came across this recipe at My Montessori Journey (via Counting Coconuts). What a pleasure to make! And it's just the best playdough to play with! This, pictured here, is my second batch and as you can see I decided to be a little adventurous. I made two batches with different amounts of cocoa added (10ml and 50ml). Little One tried to eat it a few times, but a taste or two of the salty doughy mixture and he spat it out very quickly!

I recently spoke to some girlfriends of mine who have never made play dough either. This one is especially for you ladies. Have fun!

PS. To keep your dough lasting well, store in an airtight container in the fridge.

PPS. I'm linking this to  Show and Tell @ ABC and 123.

{Added at a later date:  A nicer and easier play dough recipe (in my opinion) found here.}

Colour Fun #9 - Buckets of Colour

Do you know that your child will remember anything that is correctly associated, anything outstanding, and anything that is appropriately repeated. This wonderful information is from Tony Buzan's book, Brain Child, one of my all time favourite parenting books. Tony Buzan calls a baby's brain, "a gigantic association machine". Another great bit of information to know about, is that memory is enhanced by the more senses that are involved.

Now the idea behind buckets of colour, was to create a fun memory and association with each colour represented.  I prepared all the buckets ahead of time and included items such as balloons, play dough, finger paint, bubbles, whistles, threading toys, plastic animals, stickers, bean bags and sweeties. Originally the plan was to have only small things in each bucket, so that I could close the bucket and take it along anywhere if I wanted to. Truthfully though, I added bigger things, like a flute and real fruit, which obviously didn't fit into the buckets.

I must say that these buckets became so much more than just colour fun. There was counting (3 little green frogs); numeracy (cutting the play food in half); imaginative play (play dough snakes eating the play food); fine motor skills (using the stickers and threading); body parts (sticking the stickers on body parts); gross motor activities with balloon and bean bag fun; sensory play (painting, smelling play dough, eating ice cream); language enrichment ("lets decorate our bucket with the stickers"); and, identifying shapes. For the colour "green", for example, we took our green bucket outside and had a "green" picnic on the grass. We sat on our green picnic blanket, ate a green apple and played with our green toys!

 

For lots more colour activities, pop on over to My Delicious Ambiguity, a wonderful blog with lots of tot activities. Jenn has a whole collection of colour activities posted here.

PS. I'm linking this to Tot Tuesdays and Show and Tell.