Make your own dinosaur eggs with just a few ingredients and your favorite little plastic dinosaurs. You preschooler will love creating the eggs and then cracking them open a few days later.
You will need:
- 1 1/4 cups dirt
- 1 1/4 cups of flour
- 3/4 cups salt
- 1/2 cup sand
- Water
- Plastic Dinosaurs
How to make dinosaur eggs:
- Mix together dirt, flour, salt and sand.
- Slowly stir in water to create a dough, clay-like texture
- Mold the dough around one of the plastic dinosaurs
- let the eggs dry thoroughly. This may take all day or several days depending on the weather.
You can use this same recipe to create other kind of critter eggs as well. Use the dry eggs for scavenger hunts, dinosaur party favors or other fun dinosaur themed activities.
This is awesome. Posted about in our blog – http://parentplanet.wordpress.com/2010/09/09/great-sites-9-9/
Very cool idea. My boys are going to love this!
You could perhaps put crystals or gems in them, too! My kids love going crystal hunting.
Do you think using the oven on a very low setting would help the drying process?
I love this! I’m going to try it out and then try it out with the kids I babysit! They will love it so much! 😀
This is fab and using ingredients we have in the house already, can’t wait to try it. Thanks for sharing. Ellie
I absolutely have to do this for the letter D when I do Alphabet Summer this year!
How many (roughly) does this make? I’d like to make this with my kids for VBS, and there is supposed to be about 150 kids.
Hi Lacy, We made about 8 of the dinosaur eggs, you could make them a bit smaller and get 10-12.
Do you have to use the salt? DO you think they would form with just the dirt, sand and flour? I am trying to come up with easiest way for 3-4 year old to try and make these for a camp program. Any suggestions for little hands?
Megan,
I haven’t tried it without the salt, but I think it’s worth a try. Maybe make a small test batch and see. I think the salt helps it to dry out better – but I’m not positive. Sorry I can’t help more. Experiment, that might be the most fun!
Wow, that’s a good idea! The kids have their fun and it saves a lot of money. 🙂
Terrific idea Jen!
Thanks so much Aaron! I wish I could claim the idea as 100% my own, but I can’t. It really is a brilliant project.
im doing a dinosaur party for my soon to be 4 year old son. This sounds like a great idea for me to use for the party. thanks 🙂
Thanks so much for this! I just made these for my daughter’s 6th birthday party, and just wanted to mention that it took 3 batches to cover eight 2-3″ dinosaurs.
Can’t wait to see the kids break them open on Saturday!
My daughter and my mom made these for my daughter’s 4th birthday party and put little plastic dinosaurs inside. We put themon the radiators to dry for 3 days prior to the party. The day of the party we made a nest of rocks, dirt and sticks and buried the eggs in it. We piled flat rocks around the nest and posed jumbo plastic dinosaurs on them. The kids had to break open the eggs by pounding them on the rocks and match the baby dinosaurs to their larger “mommies”. Genius! Big hit. Thanks much for the idea. We may make these again for a non-traditional easter egg hunt!
Thank you so much for sharing, I’m so glad the dino eggs were a big hit!
I work as a librarian and love this idea. However, I made a test batch last week and had trouble with mold growing on them so they ended up smelling funny. Do you think that baking at a very low heat would help to dry them thoroughly? I am doing a summer reading program on digging up dinosaurs and would love to be able to have Dino eggs as part of the program.
Hee! I love these! What a cute project. I can’t wait to try it! : )
I just wanted to stop by to say Thank You for the great idea for the dinosaur eggs. We just finished a mini dinosaur unit, and these eggs were so much fun!
http://unschooltheteacher.blogspot.com/2013/08/fun-with-dinosaurs.html
Thanks again!!
I think baking would be a great solution, especially if you live in more humid areas. I say, try 350 for about 30-45 minutes.
Hi,
love this idea, but i was just wandering would it work without sand? I don’t have sand at home and need to make it for Monday for the kids at school.
I have not tried this recipe without the sand, but I imagine if you had some course dirt, maybe cornmeal, or some other thicker textured material it would work. You could try making a flour dough mixture and split the flour in half and replace with dirt. I’d love to hear how it works for you!
Plastic Dino’s in the oven?
If you set the temp to a low heat for a short period of time, the dinos inside should not be affected. Make sure to watch it closely.
Love this! Made it for a playgroup and it was a huge hit. Something I added was a few drops of food colouring on the already dried eggs, to make s speckled look! I also tried adding food colouring to the still wet mixture, which turned out cool as well.
Thanks for the idea!