Pasta Dinosaur Dig

Hi! This is Future Ticia 2024, and I’m updating this post and thought I’d pop in to start and say a few things about our pasta dinosaur dig to warn you. This was written back in the dark ages of the internet back in 2011, so my original pictures are small, and not that great. I did recreate our pasta dinosaur dig, more or less so I could take a picture or two with some bigger pictures. This was a great science lesson and would be great as part of a dinosaur unit or an inspiration for a dinosaur sensory bin. Also if you’re studying land animals (or general zoology, we did eventually study both), I would totally do this as part of the dinosaur chapter. I now return you to Past Ticia 2011, I’ll pop back in from time to time.

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What started the pasta dinosaur dig

In researching the state of New Jersey I found out it was the site of the first nearly complete dinosaur skeleton, it was just missing a skull.

Haddonfield, New Jersey was the site of the dig, and so that is how the hadrosaurus was named.  I was all excited and was going to make that our animal for New Jersey, but we don’t know all that much about it.  Mainly because there is no skull found for one, which is leading to a lot of theories that this may not be a separate species.  Now, the state of New Jersey is not going along with that theory.

So, in honor of this being the site of the first dinosaur dig I decided to have our own dinosaur dig, you know with 11 kids crowded around my dining room table.  I searched my Evernote to find ideas, and all of them took a lot more time to prepare (because of course I decided to do this the night before).

Future Ticia 2024 will note I was inspired by an idea from a blog that is now private. So I have removed that link.

Dinosaur Dig lesson

When they all got there we first read “Digging Up Dinosaurs,” which I knew from past experience would be perfect for this (I have an entire Dinosaur booklist from my kids brief dinosaur obsession).  As a caveat for those who care, it does say millions and millions of years ago and all of the other evolutionary stuff, but I just said, “A long time ago,” (in a galaxy far far away).

Pasta Dinosaur Dig Supplies

If you do a lot of cooking, you probably have all of these supplies in your house.

rice, orzo, penne pasta, macaroni noodles, shell pasta (the larger the shell you buy, the larger the dinosaur), plastic storage bin to hold it all

Future Ticia 2024, I just recreated it with a glass bin (which obviously I wouldn’t use with little kids) and I found it all but the shell pasta in my pantry. I will say back when I wrote this post, not all of these were commonly in my pantry. I’ve gotten much better at cooking in the last 10 years.

Performing our pasta dinosaur dig

Each kid got a small tub filled with rice and a pasta shell, about 10-15 penne pasta, 4 macaroni noodles, and 10-15 orzo noodles.

Their job was to dig through the pasta and put together a dinosaur skeleton.

Let me just say this activity was a HIT with all of the kids from the 11-year-old girl to my 4-year-old.

All of the kids asked to take home their rice and pasta mixture, so I gave them bags to put it in.

I will warn you this does require sweeping up afterward or a good vacuum.  If I’d planned better I would have used bigger tubs and less rice, but I didn’t think ahead super well, and these were the size tubs we had.

So, not a perfect project, but really fun.

Tips from Future Ticia 2024 to make this run smoother

First, I would use a bigger bin for each kid. At the time I used a bin that holds about one meal. It works, but it was messy, as I said.

Next, let them talk through how they arranged their skeleton. That’s part of the fun of this, and why it’s so similar to real dinosaur digs. Paleontologists don’t necessarily know how the skeletons are put together, so trying to put together a skeleton led to a lot of discussion on how it best fits together.

I think having the orzo mixed in with the rice was a very good call. I would only use the orzo if you are doing this activity with 3rd grade and up. The younger kids did not differentiate between the orzo and the rice. But for older kids it would be a great way to think through how scientists are telling the difference between rocks and fossils. What are the tell-tale differences?

And I might think about putting a tarp or something else underneath the whole table I could just roll up and shake out outside.

More great early elementary learning

My kids were in kindergarten when we did this, but the oldest kid participating was in fifth grade I would guess, but I’ll share some more early elementary ideas.

• Jean Lafitte (history and tall tales)
• How do dinosaurs digest their food
• Vasco da Gama lesson
• Animal observation form
• Apple poem craft and lesson

Dinosaur dig picture from

originally published March 27, 2011