Dino Dig

The girls have been studying about dinosaurs and fossils recently, and I decided it would be fun for them to see what a Paleontologist's job us really like. I gave each of them about 30 sugar cubes and asked them to design a dinosaur with them. I told them not to peek at the others design. Here are their designs.

I then sprayed the designs with a silicon coating to try to seal the sugar cubes from too much water damage and to also help them stick together better. I then asked each of them to cover their designs with dirt. This would simulate the dinosaur dying and his remains being covered over by erosion.

We switched the designs, and I gave each of them some water in a bucket. They were to use the water to GENTLY wash the dirt away and try to draw/reconstruct what they thought the dinosaur must have looked like based on what they say in the dirt. Here's what they had to work with.

It was really challenging, but I think they gained a whole new appreciation for how challenging this job really is. They both enjoyed the experiment and loved being able to look at the pictures I took afterward to try to reconstruct the dinosaurs. If I did this experiment again, I think I would use something that didn't dissolve as easily to build the dinosaurs, and I would also glue them together differently. However, it was still lots of fun.