In their Christmas stockings this year the kids each got a ‘baby dinosaur’ kit. Basically a plaster egg with a rubber dinosaur toy stuck in the middle. The kit also came with a hammer,chisel, and paintbrush so you could ‘hatch’ the egg.
What can I say, they were a $1 at Shop-Ko and I figured they’d be fun for one of those long winter weekdays when we’re trapped in the house and the kids are climbing the walls.
Naturally, 3 hours after opening them Jack comes to me and says, “Mom, can Emmy and I hatch our dinosaurs?” Well so much for that plan….
So we set both kids up to crack open those eggs. Not as easy as you’d think when all you’ve been given is a crummy $1 wooden mallet and a chisel with no biting edge. Fortunately, we have kiddie hammers from Build and Grow projects if not we’d probably still be sitting at the table tapping away at those eggs.
I think we spent close to 30 minutes tapping away at those eggs. Jack, ‘Mr. Safety First’, wore his goggles the whole time, did most of the work solo, and was the first to crack open his egg - which turned out to be a baby Teradactyl.
Emilie, on the other hand, required quite a bit more adult supervision than big brother. She politely refused any safety equipment and spent most of the time aimlessly whacking away at the egg, and my fingers, while she watched ‘The Croods’ (or as Emilie calls it, ‘Da duh dun!’)and hatched her egg simultaneously. Eventually the two of use cracked open a baby Velociraptor with a tail frustratingly embedded deeper in the plaster. That required another several minutes of careful Mommy-excavation to free it without breaking.
All around it was a pretty fun project. I think I’ve seen pins on Pintrest showing how to make your own eggs to excavate. As long as it’s cost effective and not overly messy or time consuming to make I might just try creating my own. If not they are definitely worth a trip back to the store to stock up for those long winter wall-climbing days.
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