Making Fossils

I found a salt bread dough recipe a bit ago that was supposed to be good for making fossils. Cutie Pie and I tried it out one day when it was warmer.

The recipe called for water, flour and salt to be mixed together in one bowl. (I’m not going to share the recipe, because I actually wouldn’t recommend it, even if it were me that got it wrong. It just didn’t seem right for this kind of fossil project.)

It really mixes up like a bread dough, but thicker and heavier.

Can you tell how hard Cutie Pie is working on mixing?!

After the dough was well mixed, we dumped it onto the hard table and kneaded it for a few times, then flattened it with our hands. We then made impressions of our feet and hands!

We baked them according to instructions and when they were cooled the fossil was nice and hard. (But not hard enough for our liking, hence the reason I won’t give you this recipe!)

Cutie Pie had fun placing the fossils around the house and ‘going on a hunt’ for them, pretending he was a paleontologist going out into the field looking for fossils. When he found them he would measure them, to the best of his ability, and take very good care of them pretending to dust the dirt off. He would then spend a few minutes debating what animal could possibly have made these incredibly rare fossils!

I will definitely try this again, but with a different recipe, or maybe even something edible (as long as we use something other than dirty feet to make the fossils!)