We decided to embark on a fossil excavating day at the beach. I made this magical by making a giant egg with plaster of Paris & a balloon for the kids to stumble upon.
We gathered together some excavating tools, a bucket containing a sieve, a paintbrush, some hammers and chisels and various tools for scraping, small paintbrushes, sticks and a plastic knife and headed to the beach…
Here’s how we got on…
The prep…
Whilst the kids slept I mixed some plaster of Paris and dipped baby wipes in it, I then coated two water filled balloons (to give the balloons weight and make them easier to work with) with the plaster soaked baby wipes leaving the knot exposed at the top, once dried I carefully cut the top off of the balloons and drained the water being careful not to wet the eggs and removed the balloons, I finished by dusting with a bit of black powder paint. I left the top open so the kids could see inside the egg and whatever had hatched out of it would be left to the imagination.
We found a spot on a pebble beach and set up our excavation dig area…with cake
The kids then headed off to explore and search for signs of fossils in the rocks..
I secretly placed the dinosaur egg amongst the rocks ready for the kids to discover..
We all set about hunting for fossils… Even Noah had a go..
Then we found our first fossil and chipped and chiseled it out of the rock..
Then the kids stumbled on the dinosaur egg!!!
After much discussion about what could of been in the egg it was back to the dig!!!
And there was lots to find..
We cracked open a rock and found a huge fossil! It looked like a dinosaur poop!!
But we think it was a prehistoric shell..
With our loot excavated we spent the rest of the afternoon playing under the watchful eye of our prehistoric friends…
Before gathering up our tools and heading home..
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Brill idea will be trying this as soon as I get some tools 🙂