To finish off our work on dinosaurs, we made our own fossils. Fossils are the remains of life which have been preserved (saved) in nature. In the case of dinosaurs, sometimes these were whole skeletons or footprints and they helped us to know what the dinosaurs were like.

We used salt dough and dinosaur toys to make ours in school. The salt dough recipe we used was

• 2 cups of plain flour
• 1 cup of salt
• Approx. ¾ - 1 cup water (add slowly until dough is not crumbly, but not too sticky)

My “cup” was a tall latte type mug. I doubled the recipe, and this made enough for a whole class of 30! I would guess that a small drinking glass would be more than enough for home!

Make sure your surface is protected!

1) Mix the ingredients together. Use your hands to give it a little squash and a squeeze till it looks like playdoh.

2) Take a small handful and roll into a ball between your palms.

3) Put the ball on your surface and press lightly to make something like a cookie. Not too thin!

4) Press shapes into the dough. We used our dinosaur toys and imprinted feet, claws, open mouths, stegosaurus spines, the bumpy skin texture… If you don’t have any, you could use your fingers or the end of a pencil or cut a cardboard shape to make the prints you would like.

5) You can dry this out in a low oven (120°) for around 2 hours but we are just leaving ours on some baking parchment at school to dry out at room temperature. We will turn them over every day so they dry on both sides.

6) Please send us a photo if you have a go!