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Ready for some fun non-electricity driven excitement? How about we throw in some dinosaurs and paleontology too.
National Geographic has a new kit for you. It is the Ultimate Dino Digs Triceratops Excavation Kit. This kit includes eleven dinosaur bones hidden in a dinosaur dig rock, a pair of excavation glasses, mallet, chisel, brush, and a Dinopedia collector card.
This Dig rock is made of a dirt-type substance which crumbles easily when hit with the mallet or chisel. The substance is quite messy though so either cover your table with newspaper or do this outside. We choose to do this outside. There was quite alot of dust and mess so this is probably your best bet as well. Little Man loves dinosaurs and had a blast smashing at the rock, uncovering bones. The bones themselves were made of quite sturdy plastic so with his smashed we didn’t break any of them which is always nice. It was also interesting to see the big clumps of dirt around the bones which took an imprint of the bones, just like real bones would. Once the bones were all excavated we dug through the excess dirt just to be sure we didn’t miss anything and found we were ok. The smallest piece was the jaw bone and it is about the size of a quarter, fyi. Just keep in mind before throwing away or sweeping away the dirt, there are supposed to be eleven bones.
When we were all done excavating and double checking the dirt, we opted to wash the bones in the sink, with minimal dirt going down the drain. Building the Triceratops was easy and even without directions would have been a cake walk for a parent-child team. There is minimal articulation on the completed dinosaur, its head moves and the jaw opens and closes. Overall, Little Man really likes the kit and we had a very good time building it. He was even excited to learn about the completed dinosaur from the collector card. These kits can be used by themselves or possibly part of a paleontology/dinosaur theme, like maybe a birthday party where the ‘rocks’ are scattered about the yard and the party guests have to find them. At least that is the first thing I thought of 🙂
This is such a COOL idea!
he loved it
This is exactly the sort of thing I would have loved around that age.
My dad use to dig through dirt as a job trying to find fossil and dino pieces! What a great learning experience for children.
I totally love this! I have to get one for my nephew!