Dino Party: Fossilized Dinosaur Eggs

These party favors are fun to make and fun to destroy. Fossilized dinosaur eggs are what we chose to send home with our party guests and I got a few reports back on how much the kids loved breaking them up…
Also known as Treasure Stones (thanks Skip to My Lou and about.com), these eggs are made from a dough and dried so that they resemble rocks. I do recommend making these a week in advance so there’s time to dry the eggs. All you need is:

• 1 cup flour
• 1 cup used coffee grinds. If you don’t drink coffee, just stop by your local Starbucks and ask for their used grinds…I got 10+ cups of grinds in 5 minutes! Spread out overnight to allow them to dry.
• 1/2 cup salt
• 1/4 cup sand. I bought a bag at WalMart for under $3.50 and now we have a fun little sandbox from the leftovers.
• 1 cup water
• Small dinosaur toys to put inside your eggs

1. Mix all of the dry ingredients together. I multiplied this recipe by 10 so we used a big bucket to mix in…
2. Slowly add the water and mix with your hands until you have a stiff dough.
3. Take a glob of dough and press a dinosaur toy into the middle of it. Take some more dough and cover the toy. Shape the ball of dough into an egg shape.
4. When all of your stones are done  you can either leave them out for several (5-7) days to dry or put them in the oven at at 150 degrees for 2 hours. Then leave them out for 2-3 days to finish drying. If you live somewhere humid, put them back in the oven the day of your party for an hour to make sure they’re hard. Then you can send the eggs home with kids or have them smash them open at the party…
Edit: 1/16/13 If I had to guess, our batch made about 50 eggs. If you make a single batch you could probably get anywhere from 5-10 depending on how big the eggs are and how big the surprise on the inside is.

Just so you know, if you’re not a fan of the smell of coffee, this craft is pretty stinky. We just made sure the eggs were outside as much as possible! :) We smashed them outside and spread the remains in the garden since it’s all compost-ible.

I’m linking up to Preschool Corner Friday, Fun Stuff Friday, Friday Fun Finds, Friday Favorites, Fancy This Fridays, A Little Knick Knack, Friday Link Party, and