Today we opened up our Paleontology Starter Kit from KiwiCrate. My boys had such a blast with this set!
There are a few activities that came with this kit. One was the excavation of dinosaur fossils. Digging out the fossils with the tools was of course the fun part! As the kids dug out their fossils, they matched them on a poster that had the fossil 🦴 names.
Then, we got to make our own fossils out of plaster of Paris (POP). This part was really cool too since we’ve never used this type of material before.
The kids were able to carefully measure, mix, and pour their own POP when making their dinosaur molds. My youngest grabbed his toy lizard as the word dinosaur means “terrible lizard” and he thought it would be fitting to make a mold of one. I couldn’t agree more.
What skills do the kids learn with this kit?
So many skills are covered in this kit!
Teamwork: working together to excavate and put together a dinosaur.
Communication: talking to each other during the process and communicating whose doing what.
Reading: reading fossil parts; reading instructions to make dinosaur molds.
Math: measuring accurately to make the plaster of paris
Science: learning about dinosaurs and their history.
A Few Book Suggestions:
Before and after we completed our kit, we read a few books about dinosaurs and mammoths that we found at the library. The “Digging up dinosaurs” by Aliki was fitting, of course!
My Joy of Kiwi Crates:
Every time I open up a KiwiCrate I wonder if I’ll be amazed since we’ve done similar experiments prior, but I’m always blown away in the end! They did a really great job with packaging the materials and really, there’s just not much for me to have to prep, which at this point, I’m so grateful for! The kids always love doing the activities and many times, like this time, I wish I bought two of the same exact kit so that both boys could have enjoyed their own dinosaur excavation. For younger children one kit might work, but I have an almost 7 and 9 year old who love and enjoy all things STEAM. So that’s something I would recommend if you are deciding if to get one kit or two.
Have you tried out this kiwi crate yet? Let me know what you thought of it!
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*Adult Supervision Is Required For All Activities*