Salt Dough Dinosaur Fossils & More To Investigate Dinosaurs! 

Inside: How to make salt dough dinosaur fossils and a fun dinosaur research unit!

Are your kids excited about dinosaurs? Studying dinosaurs in your classroom or homeschool? I’ve got an activity that is both fun AND educational- make salt dough dinosaur fossils!

Gather your salt dough dinosaur fossils ingredients

First, you’ll need to create the salt dough. You’ll need:

• 1 cup salt
• 2 cups flour
• 1 cup water

This will make enough for about 2 students, so you will need to make quite a bit more for a full class of kids!

How to make salt dough fossils

Making the salt dough is super simple. First, sift the salt and flour together. Then slowly stir in the water. Knead the dough for at least 5 minutes. The longer you knead it, the smoother it will be!

Once you have finished kneading the dough it’s time to design your dinosaur fossils!

Design your dinosaur fossils

Have the kids shape the dough into the shapes of the dinosaur they have been researching. You can find pictures in books or on the internet for students to refer to.

Students can use a pen or pencil to make holes in the skull where they are needed.

You can have students do the skull, an arm, and a leg. You could even have the students do the whole skeleton if they want to! It’s all up to you and your students! This is the fun part. 🙂

Dry the salt dough

You can let the salt dough dinosaur fossils air dry for several days. This is easiest for a full class. But, if you’re simply doing these at home with your kids, pop them in the oven at 200* F for an hour or two to dry (depending on how thick their fossils are!)

Once they are dry, voila! You have some awesome-looking fossils! My husband had an awesome idea to paint them with antiquing as well. Unfortunately, he came up with the idea AFTER I’d already tossed our lovely creation. (Because of course, as a mom, I can’t keep every craft around the house forever!) I’ll post a picture if I ever get around to doing so! If anyone else tries the antiquing paint, I’d love to see how it turned out. 😉

Make salt dough dinosaur fossils as part of a Dinosaur Research Unit

This fun activity is one of the culminating projects in my Dinosaur Research Unit! In this unit, students will learn about the text features of informational text and how to use them. The unit includes a fun, color-filled version as well as a black-and-white version. 

Then, students will read informational text about dinosaurs, choose a dinosaur to research, and answer one question each day in their Research Journal. (A total of 19 writing prompts are included, you can use as many or as few as you want for your class). 

The research journal guides the students step by step as they research their dinosaurs. It is a great way to make even the students who are intimidated by informational text feel comfortable reading it and have fun doing so!

As a culminating project, students will create salt dough fossils of their dinosaur (following the instructions above) and write a report about the dinosaur using their research. Then you can host a Dinosaur Fair to have students share their projects along with a short oral report with their parents.

The Dinosaur Research Unit includes a unit calendar, grading rubric, detailed lesson plans, dinosaur cards (to assign students to a dinosaur), and ALL pages in both color and black and white!

Let me know if you try the Dinosaur Research Unit or making salt dough dinosaur fossils at home or in your classroom! I’d love to hear all about it in the comments! 🙂