Playdough Dinosaur Egg Surprise

Calling all dino-fans!  Here's a fun, yet simple activity that will keep little hands busy looking for dinosaurs!  Sneak in fine motor skills while excavating playdough dinosaur eggs!

If you've been browsing Target's party aisles lately, you may have seen these oh so cute pack of dinosaurs for $2.  

Seeing only one bag left, I snatched them up real quick!  At the time I didn't have an immediate use for them, but as I mentioned-- they were cute and $2! Ha!  

However, as I've had time to sit and stare at this pack of dinosaurs, I can see they would be great for counting, color sorting, and today's fine motor activity-- Excavating Playdough Dinosaur Eggs!!  

PlayDough Fine Motor Activity

Grab a pack of dinosaurs and have fun excavating them from playdough eggs!

Supplies:

• mini dinosaurs
• play dough

While the kids are busy excavating, grab one of our favorite dinosaur books for storytime.

Sounds like a great morning and/or afternoon activity to me!

We've shared a fine motor playdough activity a few months ago; remember our Playdough Pumpkin? Well, our Playdough Dinosaur Eggs follow the same concept.

Simply mold playdough into an egg shape over the dinosaur.  Then, invite your child to come explore.

For a little extra suspense, I added the playdough eggs to a fake planter and asked my daughter to find what was inside-- the playdough eggs!

Encourage your child (children) to pull and squeeze, poke, and tear apart the playdough to find what is inside-- the dinosaur!

You'll find that playdough provides plenty of opportunity to strengthen all the muscles in the hand.

I've never really been fond of playdough-- more so because of the mess-- until I realized how much it helps getting those hand muscles all working together; those muscles are important for writing!

I also found that homemade playdough is way more manageable than store bought... not exactly sure why that is?!

I drew up little color cards for their "home," to add in some color matching fun, too.  

After you've excavated all of the dinosaurs from the playdough eggs and have sorted them by color, work on rolling and flattening the dough to make dinosaur fossils by pushing them into the playdough.

It would be also be a great time to sing, "The Playdough Song" which goes like this:

"This is how we roll the dough, 

roll the dough,

roll the dough, 

this is how we roll the dough, 

when we play with playdough"

....  continue singing while changing up the action word for poke, flatten, rip, etc!

{And actually, I am not sure if the song has a name, but that's what we call it!}

Have fun excavating, color sorting, and counting with these playdough dinosaur eggs!

More Fine Motor Activities:

• Feeding the Monster from Powerful Mothering
• Magic Leprechaun Spray Fine Motor Play from Little Bins for Little Hands
• Pipe Cleaner Rainbow from Still Playing School
• Using A Knife from P is for Preschooler
• Personalized Hot Air Balloon Contact Paper Craft  from House of Burke
• St. Patrick's Day Counting Game from LalyMom

You Also Might Like:

• Dinosaur Preschool Unit 

• 9 FUN ways to use Play Dough

• 7 Must Read Dinosaur Books

• Clothespin Dinosaur Counting Tray