Make Your Own Dinosaur Fossils!

To go along with our Dinosaur Sensory Tote and other dinosaur activities that we are working on, we made some dinosaur fossils. These were simple to make and the kids really enjoyed making them. My kids have big smiles on their faces and my house smells like a coffee shop!

 

To make your own, all you need is:
1 cup used coffee grounds
1/2 cup cold coffee
1/2 cup salt
1 cup flour

Mix the coffee grounds, coffee, salt, and flour together in a mixing bowl.

 

Mix until ingredients are combined and a dough is formed.

Form small balls of dough in your hands and flatten them out into circles that are about 1/2 inch thick on a cookie sheet.

 

 

 

Lay small dinosaurs on their side to make dinosaur imprints and you can use larger dinosaur dinosaurs to make footprints.

 

 

 

When your baking sheet is full or you are out of dough....

 

 

 

Bake them in the oven at 200 degrees for 30 minutes.

 

 

 

Take the fossils out of the oven and carefully remove them from the cookie sheet with a spatula.  Once they are cooled, turn them over and let the bottoms dry out overnight. Ours were still a bit soft after a few days, so I decided to put them back in the oven for 30 minutes at 350 degrees and they are nice and hard now.

Who Knew Play Dough Could Smell So Good?-- Kool-Aid Play Dough

My son wanted to play with play dough today, I decided to one up it by letting him make some. It only took 10-15 minutes to make, it kept him busy for hours, and my house smells nice and fruity!  I had everything I needed on hand, with the exception of the Kool-Aid, which I picked up a generic pack of 24 last night for $1.00.

Recipe:
1 packet Kool-Aid (any brand works)
1 cup flour
1/2 cup salt
2 Tablespoons vegetable oil
1 cup boiling water

 

We made 2 batches in about 20 minutes.  Because of the boiling  water, it needs some time to cool before you can knead it properly with your hands.  I used the cooling time to work on my second batch.

The first thing I did was put1 cup of water on to boil.  Feel free to boil it on the stove or in the microwave, whichever method is easiest for you. Now it is time to measure our ingredients.

 

 

Pour the Kool-Aid packet into a medium-sized bowl and add your flour and salt. Mix these dry ingredients together really well.  The better you mix it when it is dry, the less you will have to knead it to even out the color when it’s hot.

 

  

Once your dry ingredients are mixed well, add  the 1 cup of boiling water and 2 Tablespoons of oil.  Stir contents with a spoon. DO NOT try to knead this with your hands right away, it is way too hot! Once you can no longer make any progress with the spoon, set the bowl aside to cool.

 

Look at that smile, he is so proud of his work!

 

If you are making multiple colors/batches, use this time to start the next one. When the dough is cool enough to handle, knead the dough until everything is thoroughly combined and the color is evenly distributed throughout the dough.

 

 

 That's it, it is that simple! Now, it is play time!