Camp Mommy: Dinosaur Bones Excavation

So today was my first day off. I came home this morning from my night shift, slept until 12:30 PM and woke up to some cloudy skies. It wasn't raining and I usually like to do something on my first day off, so it doesn't waste away with my tiredness. The switch over day is always brutal, but having some fun with my boys always turns it around for me and brings our own VDV sunshine.

This idea actually stemmed a few months ago, after a trip to Drumheller. Like I said previously, I don't always like to give the presents I get for my kids the day of purchase...leaving them for fun activities later in the week or in this case, a few months after. I saw this dinosaur skeleton kit in one of their tourist shops and thought it would be fun to have our own archaeology play in the summer. Today was the day I put this activity in action.

While Bug was inside, I quickly ran outside to our sandbox and buried the skeleton pieces (some of them were really small so I didn't take them all off the framework they were initially packaged as). Then, like true archaeology fashion, I boxed off the area we would be working in. I did this for two reasons: 1) to make it easier to remember where to find all the pieces; and 2) to somewhat resemble a true digging site. I did this by standing 4 popsicle sticks in the sand as the four corners of the square. Then I wrapped string around the sticks to complete the square. After that, the fun began. I got Bug to put on his archaeology dinosaur hat (a Dollarama purchase) and we put his play compass to use. I helped him "read" this compass to direct us to our dig site. Once at the sandbox, I gave Bug his digging tools (some sauce brushes for meat from Dollarama) and showed him how to sweep away the sand to find the parts of the skeleton. When he found the first one, he was super thrilled and was then on a very determined mission to find the others.

Once all the pieces were found, we brought them over to our sidewalk to build the skeleton. This was a little too difficult for Bug, so I ended up doing the bulk of the construction. This dinosaur was a very special one, he is a Glow-ciraptor! If you can't tell from the name, he glows in the dark...haha. We brought him inside, got Jacob's flashlight and locked ourselves in the dark bathroom. Right now at bedtime we make shadow puppets with our hands, so Bug was pretty excited about the dino-shadow created while we were charging the glow with the flashlight. This will probably be part of our nightly routine for the next week, making sure our Glow-ciraptor is all charged right before bed.

In case you don't have a Glow-ciraptor, Dollarama does sell wooden dinosaur skeleton kits that could turn into craft play after excavation. The little kiddie could get their paint practice in, creating their very own dinosaur. If you can't find one of those, this blog has a cute idea on how to make your own dinosaur fossils. If you want to spend the money, Toys 'r us also sells 2 different dinosaur skeleton kits as well.

After we put our Glow-ciraptor together, Bug said he was beautiful, and he was a GREAT dinosaur!

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