Cast Fossil

Children can be fascinated by fossils, and this is a way you can learn about them by making your own. We have other "fossil" ideas below, too...

Our cast fossils (bark, leaf and shell)

You will need:

Air drying clay
Natural materials (we used bark, leaves and a shell)

Instructions:

Shape your clay into a rough plaque shape. Press in your pieces to make an impression and remove.

Leave the clay to harden. You can discuss with the children that millions of years ago dinosaurs left their footprints in mud and as the mud got buried it hardened to stone.

Other fossil ideas

Plaster of Paris / air drying clay
Children love digging for fossils. Make your own by covering a small plastic dinosaur in air drying clay or sinking it in a tub of Plaster of Paris. When the clay or plaster is dry it can be gently chipped away with a plastic knife to get to the dinosaur.

Beware - this can be quite time consuming (it took Jack over three weeks to get all the bones from the kit version he had for Christmas!)

Ice
A quicker approach which is more suitable for young children as no knives are involved is to freeze the dinosaur in a block of ice. To get the dinosaur out, squeeze warm water from a washing up liquid bottle over the ice. You can explain that palaeontologists can’t use big equipment such as hammers as they can damage the fossils. And of course this can lead on to a discussion about the baby mammoth discovered in the permafrost of North West Siberia...

More Dinosaur Crafts

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