Dino Dig

About three years ago I had a the 'brilliant' idea of putting a bunch of plastic dinosaurs in plaster. Little did I know that over three years it became part of my mission to release them. I could easily do it myself, but I thought i'd give the children a chance. There were some brief successes over the years where the children managed to free one of the little guys, but for the most part there they sat, encased in plaster. 

Much of the lack of success has been due to the lack of me of thinking like a child, and involving the children in the problem solving process. It was this time, that I asked the children what we needed to release these dinosaurs. The children recalled what they had seen in one of our books.... shovels, hammers, brushes, water, etc. Of course, why not use the real thing?!?!?

We've been completely engrossed in the wonders that are dinosaurs, and it was a great opportunity to practice our paleontology skills. So when the children arrived this week, the sensory table was set up like this.  

The children recovered the tools mentioned above. And rather that digging in head first into the project, they carefully used their paleontology knowledge to recover the 'plastered dinos' I'm not kidding, they drove ME crazy with their patience to detail in retrieving the dinosaurs, brushing each little granule of sand until the dinosaur was nearly lifting itself out of the sand!

This is what the children carefully brushed the sand away from. Then immediately set to work on extracting the dinos from their plaster prison!

Our tinkering tools were carefully laid out (by the children) and ready for extracting. You can also see that some plastic blueberries were also set out on the table as a tool that could be used. Not sure what for, perhaps in case the paleontologist became hungry during the dig. A picture further down the page you can also see the a tiny toaster was deemed a useful tool. Of course, it was! 

Of course some children just enjoyed moving the sand around. The softness of the recovery as opposed to the loudness of the extracting was a bit more soothing.

Then came the giant spike nails. Again, these items we are retrieved by the children when I gave them full reign of my 'actual' tool shelf. I'm pretty sure the enormity of the nails was appeal in itself, but they were very practical too!

I got very excited when I saw that the dinos had left and imprint on the plaster. The children were impressed, but I did get the impression that they were trying to humour me, as the thrill of hammering was more satisfying

Back at work, it took a lot of skill to keep the plaster still, as well as hold the nail and hammer all at the same time. These children made it seem like it was the easiest thing in the world!

I would say it was a successful dino dig, would you?

Of course, who could forget, that after being encased in plaster for three years, the dinos were in dire need of a bath, so that's right where they headed!