Salt Dough Dinosaur Fossils

My eldest, Tommy, seems to be obsessed with dinosaurs at the moment and a lot of our play has centred around them. We recently set up a small world using our collection of Schleich dinosaurs and spent hours playing with it. Whilst playing, Tommy used his dinosaurs to make a variety of imprints into his playdough 'sand' and 'swamp' areas of the tuff tray and this is what gave me the idea of making fossils. The activity is perfect for any dinosaur fanatic, it is great for mark-making, encourages children to learn dinosaurs' names and explore their characteristics and allows opportunities to explore measuring and comparing.

To make our fossils, we used a collection of small dinosaurs (we bought these from a local garden centre for a couple of pounds), a batch of salt dough, some acrylic paints and pva glue.

The salt dough is very easy to make. Just mix together two cups of flour, 2 cups of salt and 1 cup of water and then knead the mixture thoroughly. Roll the dough out between two sheets of greaseproof paper to a thickness of 1/4 of an inch. We used a pint glass to cut out circles of dough, as this was the perfect size to fit our dinosaurs. 

To make the fossils, dip each dinosaur into flour and press it firmly enough into the salt dough so that it makes a decent print. Repeat this step if the print isn't well-defined. We used a variety of different small dinosaurs and also made a few fossils using parts of the larger dinosaurs. Claws, spikes, heads and tails worked really well.

We baked the fossils in the oven at 120 degrees (250 degrees F) for 2-3 hours and once they were dry, we painted them in earthy tones of acrylic paint. As a final touch, we blotted the paint to make the fossils look old and then sealed them with watered down pva glue.

I actually preferred the fossils without paint and PVA glue. They look so much more defined without. If I was to do the project again, I wouldn't bother with the painting stage.