We were quite busy over these holidays, and one of the things we had a lot of fun doing was excavating a dinosaur skeleton.
Yep you read that right, we excavated a dinosaur skeleton right here in our own backyard. Okay so it wasn't a real life size dinosaur but we followed the same principals using our Dinosaur Excavation Kit - we excavated the Velociraptor.
This kit comes with everything you could possibly need for a successful dig. And a lot of digging you will need to do. The skeleton is embedded in a plaster block, and with the special digging tool provided, you slowly and painstakingly dig away the plaster to reveal each piece of the skeleton.
It took a wee while to dig up all the bones, my children were still a bit on the small side for the patience it needs for the dig, but they were very useful on the brush to brush away loose plaster to help reveal the bones. It took me a good 1-2 hours to complete the dig, so this is a great kit if you need to keep your children occupied for several hours at a time. They may even take a couple of days but well worth the effort.
A word to the wise, the dig is best completed outside, or on a large surface covered with newspaper or an old sheet or cloth. There will be a lot of dust around, and not a good look having it walked into your carpet.Once we had excavated all the bones and cleaned them off, (checking on the instructions as to how many bones we should have), then came the part of assembling the skeleton. We found the diagram on the instructions easy to follow, and the bones had sockets and pins on them so they just clipped together. A bit of wax is provided in this kit to help seal the bones together, but we found they clipped together very easy and didn't need the wax.
We had the Velociraptor assembled and looking great. Thankfully this kit also comes with a cardboard display stand with which we could then display our skeleton.
This kit was lots of fun to test, and recommended for kids over 7yrs old. It's available now through our website http://www.thecraftibug.co.nz/.
