Check out Childhood 101 for other We Play ideas!
Dinosaurs, dinosaurs
. Cutie Pie is all about dinosaurs still (are you surprised?!) We continue reading a lot of books from the library about dinosaurs and some of them talk about how dinosaurs have been found intact or nearly intact in ice. Cutie Pie has talked a lot about this, so it gave me an idea. Of course, this idea is probably not unique and I’m sure others have done the same thing (once again please tell me if this was your idea or if you’ve seen it somewhere else and I’ll gladly link to it!), but for me on this day it was an ah-ha moment.
. Cutie Pie is all about dinosaurs still (are you surprised?!) We continue reading a lot of books from the library about dinosaurs and some of them talk about how dinosaurs have been found intact or nearly intact in ice. Cutie Pie has talked a lot about this, so it gave me an idea. Of course, this idea is probably not unique and I’m sure others have done the same thing (once again please tell me if this was your idea or if you’ve seen it somewhere else and I’ll gladly link to it!), but for me on this day it was an ah-ha moment. It was still rather early in the day, so I snuck a few little dinosaurs from ‘the dinosaur box’ and a few little bathroom cups and I plopped those little dinos in, filled the cups with water and placed them in the freezer (miraculously) without Cutie Pie noticing. Of course, I forgot all about them! But the next morning as we were talking about dinosaurs once again I steered the conversation towards the ice idea and pulled them out for Cutie Pie to ‘excavate’. I made sure to lay down a towel, remove the cup from the ice cubed dinosaurs and placed the frozen dinos in a container to catch the water and I offered the boys various ‘excavating tools’ like warm water, a water dropper, a spray bottle, paint brushes and tweezers to help remove the dinos from the ice that was ‘preserving’ them.
What a hit! We’ve done this activity several times now, and at the moment there are 6 dinos being preserved in our freezer for another round of excavating in the morning! Cutie Pie gets to practice his fine motor skills and use logic in picking which tools to use when in the melting process. We also try to predict which dinosaur he is excavating as different parts of the dinosaur are observed.
Very fun. I like to freeze things in large blocks and put them in the bathtub to slowly melt. That takes their mind of "getting clean".
Oh, my kiddos LOVE taking baths, but the larger block of ice sounds like it might be a fun outdoor version of this activity to try in the summer! Love it!
This is a wonderful idea for a hot day, one my little dinosaur lovers would adore in the bath or little pool.
Ps my name is Trish and I am the other girl in our house too …I am next to you too on 101 We play !
That sounds like a lot of fun 🙂 Princess hs done some excavation with Dadda previously, but I think this is one she could do herself 🙂
What a great way to reinforce Cutie Pie's learning.