We picked back up our geography for kids with a cookie fossil dig in Colorado. I know this is also a science for kids activity, but we did it as part of learning about Colorado. I would put it as part of a Land Animals Unit.
{This post contains affiliate links. For more information, read my disclosure page}
First we read Dinosaur Mountain: Digging into the Jurassic Age, before starting our study of Colorado again, I hadn’t known the state was known for a large dinosaur dig in the late 1800s, when the huge dinosaur craze was going on. There’s a series of canyons stretching from Utah to Colorado that has a large number of fossils.
We’ve previously done a couple of dinosaur excavations (dinosaur dig at the park, dinosaur excavation kit, and pasta dinosaur dig), and I wanted to come up with a slightly different variation
Cookie fossil dig supplies
chocolate chip or M&M cookie (we chose M&M), toothpicks* (I like these because I won’t crush the box and have them all over the drawer the next day) or Bamboo Skewers* (which is what I discovered I actually had in the house, sigh)
Cookie fossil dig procedure
I stressed to the kids the importance of recording their findings as they dig up their fossils. I also stressed the importance of being slow with your work.
So they set to it, slowly breaking apart bits and pieces of the cookies, and finding the all important M&Ms. Then they recorded what they found with where it was in the cookie, how many there were, and any other details they found important.
As a final step, they were to write what they thought they found. Paleontologists in the early days knew nothing about what they were finding and were making it up as they went along, so my kids made up the answers too, based on the theories they created.
And of course, in the end, we ate some of the leftover cookies, a tough job, but someone had to do it.
More great science or geography lessons
- Preschool Rain Experiment
- desert biome lesson and craft
- Me on the Map: my room
- How to make a compass
- Rock booklist
Leave a Reply