Once your kids know how to make salt dough dinosaur bones, this could become one of your favorite family activities!
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I love making salt dough projects. They’re fun, quick, easy, and inexpensive. As long as you store them correctly , salt dough dinosaur bones will last a really long time. My oldest little boy and I made some salt dough ornaments five years ago that are still as cute as can be!
how to make salt dough
Making salt dough is super easy. All you need is flour, salt, and water.
Simply mix 2 cups of flour, 1 cup of salt and 1 cup of water in bowl and stir with a spoon. Once the ingredients are loosely mixed together, knead the dough in your hands. Keep kneading the salt dough until it comes together and can easily form shapes.
Then it will be easy to either roll between your hands to form bone shapes or flatten out to make footprint fossils.
I figured we would make simple bone shapes. Dylan and I rolled out our salt dough to form what look like rib bones and maybe back bones. But Christian is a true artist. I had no idea he was going to do this, but he pulled up an image of a t-rex skull on my phone. He spent about an hour creating this salt dough t-rex skull and it is amazing! I actually started my college career as a studio arts major, but my eight year old constantly has me thinking I was wasting my time LOL! (BTW, that’s marker on Christian’s hand from another art project – not some horrible skin infection.)
Today’s fun dinosaur fact
Here’s today’s fun dinosaur fact: Although t-rex has been featured in all of the Jurassic Park and Jurassic World movies, this therapod dinosaur actually lived during the Cretaceous period 65 million years ago.
If your little one is obsessed with dinosaurs, don’t worry – it may be a good thing! Read why you should encourage your child’s love of dinosaurs to see some of the benefits.
Back to how to make salt dough dinosaur bones…
Christian had a ton of fun sculpting his t-rex skull and Dylan was delighted with his creation.
After you’re done sculpting your dinosaur bones, put them on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Bake them in a 300 degree oven for at least 1 1/2 hours. You’ll notice that our bones are two different shades. I turned off the oven but left a batch of dinosaur inside to cool over night. I forgot that I still had them in the oven when I turned it on for dinner the next day. So they got a little more “done” than necessary but I think they actually tuned out great! The bones are very hard and a little porous.
Once the salt dough dinosaur bones are out of the oven and cooled it’s time to play paleontologist!
I tend to over complicate things, so I was thinking we were going to need a huge outdoor sand box for the kids to really enjoy digging up dinosaur bones. I had a large but shallow tupperware container that I decided to store the dinosaur bones in. Then I saw that I had black sand and paint brushes from Dollar Tree and thought – why not? I dumped the sand into the container with the dinosaur bones and handed the boys the paint brushes. And you know what? They loved it!
What’s really nice is that the kids can play with the salt dough dinosaur bones inside without making much of a mess. And it’s really easy to put away when they are done playing.
Between making the salt dough dinosaur bones and playing with them, this dinosaur activity has provided my kids with hours of screen free entertainment. Adios mom guilt! If you need another fun dinosaur activity check out our dino drool clear slime recipe.
If you sign up for the 65 million years weekly newsletter, as a thank you, you can download and print out the instruction sheet for making these salt dough dinosaur bones. You’ll actually get full access to our growing digital library will other fun project instructions sheets, activity worksheets, dinosaur crafts patterns and more!
I hope you and your kids have so much fun making salt dough dinosaur bones and going “fossil hunting”. Let me know how yours turns out in the comments below. Until next time!
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