A little known fact about me is that I was quite the science nerd growing up. So once I had kids, I have felt that I have been able to rediscover and explore now together! This salt dough trend has been used for many different types of crafts like capturing milestone hand prints and Christmas ornaments but I never jumped onto the trend UNTIL I saw someone use it to make a dinosaur fossil sensory bin. It is super easy and I could even include my toddler throughout the whole process. So here is how you can recreate:
Materials:
Salt Dough Incredients: flour, salt, water
Rolling pin, mixing bowl, and cup (to make fossils)
Miniature dinosaurs (I bought mine from the miniature section of Michaels store)
Rice (for “soil”)
Paint brushes (for excavation!)
Directions:
- Preheat your oven to 200 degrees.
- Make the salt dough by mixing 1 cup of flour and ½ cup of salt. Then add ½ cup of water and mix until combined.
- Knead the dough on a lightly floured surface until soft.
- Then roll the dough to ¼-½ inch thick. Use the cup to make circles into the dough to form the fossil.
- Use your favorite dinosaurs (or other animals) to push into the dough to make an imprint. You can either do one dinosaur per circle or a mixture of body parts and foot prints.
- Place the fossils on a cookie sheet and cook in an oven until dry for x30 minutes, or until both sides are fully dry.
- Now it’s time to make the rest of your sensory bin! I just used a large elongated tubberware.
- Start with “soil”, this could be rice, lentils, ground cereal or gram crackers. Then place fossils into “soil”.
- Can add more nature to add to the experience like rocks, dried leaves, dried pine needles, etc.
- Excavate and explore!