Cookie Fossil Dig

Can your students work with the precision and patience needed by a paleontologist on a fossil dig?

Provide each student with a chocolate chip cookie, a toothpick and a small paintbrush.  See who can remove the most unscathed chocolate chips without breaking the cookie!

You might want to have your students try a few different types of cookies - are the chips easier to remove from crisp cookies or soft, chewy cookies?

I did this simple, paleontologist cookie dig with students at our library during a summer program, which was perfect for the age group I was working with (3 - 10).  However, I've also done cookie mining with middle school students.  Women in Mining provides a fantastic activity that includes a financial aspect (students are given a budget and have to purchase their cookie, mining tools, mining time and reclamation costs) in addition to precision.  I've mentioned it before, but it's worth repeating... take some time to check out the other activities on the Women in Mining website - they're really well done!

Summer Science Camp: Fossils

**Warning: when it comes to making these fossils, do as I say, not as I do...**

Fossil footprints could certainly be added to your summer camp repertoire, but summer's also a great time to break out the big-guns and make some plaster fossils. 

Before beginning, you'll want to collect a bunch of objects with interesting shapes and textures.  You can look around the house to find things or search outdoors.  You may even want to have students collect objects during a nature walk.  Seed pods of different types are interesting (gum balls - from gum trees - are really great).  Leaves are a bit tricky, but worth trying. 

To begin the activity, each student will need a paper plate and a hunk of clay.  This is where you need to follow my directions, not my pictures - you NEED to use real clay, NOT play doh.  (For photography purposes, I tried using what I had on hand, but the results were disastrous, as you'll see below).

Spread the clay into a pancake on the plate.  You want to leave it somewhat thick - about 1 cm or 1/4". 

Use the various objects you've gathered to make impressions in the clay. 

Following the package directions, mix up some plaster of paris.  This is good to do outside, but if you're doing it inside, be very careful to avoid having the plaster go down the drain...

Pour some plaster over each of the clay impressions.

Your plaster will probably run over the sides of the clay a bit - I mixed mine a little too thick. 

Then you let it sit and harden, overnight at the very least.

And this would be where I show you how to life the whole thing off the plate, peel the clay off the plaster and reveal a beautiful plaster cast.

Instead, I used play doh, which is has too much water and doesn't allow the plaster to harden properly, so I have a crumbly mess.  Use clay! 

For what it's worth, you can see a small piece of the bolt fossil:

Fossils: Digging for Dinosaur Bones

Keep your eyes out for puzzles similar to these (I've found them at Michael's, for only a buck or two each):

They're wooden sheets of pieces that you punch out and then assemble.  The paper inside the package tells you how to assemble the pieces, but you don't need it for this activity. 

Punch out the pieces for one dinosaur and bury the pieces in a bucket of sand.  Have students dig out the pieces and then try to assemble the pieces.  Without the instructions in front of them, they'll be working as paleontologists do, trying to determine how the bones go together. 

Some other ideas to consider:
*Mix up pieces from two different dinosaurs in the same bucket of sand - students have to determine which bones go with which fossil, as well as assembling them.
*Don't put all of the pieces in the bucket - you don't always find a complete skeleton in one place.
*Consider putting the pieces in something that requires more excavation than just pulling the pieces out of sand. 

Even if your curriculum doesn't include a study of dinosaurs and/or fossils, you can use this activity as a lesson on the way scientists work. 

Fossil Footprints

I'm really proud of this activity - it's one I came up with on my own.  Maybe someone else out there has done it, but I didn't know about it when I tried it!

This is an activity in which students can make their own fossils - fossils of footprints.

The most difficult part of this activity is locating the rubber stamps to use.  I thought the set pictured above came from Ward's Natural Science, but I cannot find it there or at any of the other suppliers I've used.  Amazon does have a similar set here; they are clear plastic stamps instead of wooden stamps, but that shouldn't make a difference.

The good news is, once you acquire the stamps to use, you'll be set for as many times as you wish to do this!

Each student will need:
--A small piece of clay
--A small piece of Model Magic or other air-dry clay or Play-Doh*
--A length of lanyard

To make the fossils:
--Flatten the piece of regular clay into a pancake.
--Use the stamps to make footprint impressions in the clay pancake.  I like to keep my designs simple with just one type of footprint, but your students will likely want to try as many as they can!

--Use your fingers to flatten the piece of Model Magic into a pancake about the same size as the clay.
--Place the Model Magic pancake on top of the clay pancake. 
--Gently push the Model Magic onto the clay, rubbing your finger over the entire surface.

--Use a skewer or the tip of a pen to make a small hole in the Model Magic.
--Place in a safe spot to dry.*
--When dry, pull the clay away from the Model Magic.  The clay can be saved to use again next time - store in a plastic bag.
--Observe the fossil footprint you made.

--Thread the lanyard through the fossil and wear proudly!

*Model Magic clay dries very quickly - in a day or so, which is really nice for this project.  However, it can be on the expensive side, so I started to experiment with other alternatives.  I found that Play-Doh fits the bill, however, it takes quite a few days to dry out until it's hard (which is funny, because the Play-Doh that gets left out around my house always seems to dry out in record time.... ).  There is another advantage to the Play-Doh, once it's finally dry, it's hard!  The Model Magic remains kind of flexible, and if the students pull on it, the lanyard will rip right out. 

BTW, you don't have to use footprint stamps.  You could use any other kind of stamp or use other random objects to make impressions.  I just happened to have the stamps, but I do think they add a certain realism to the project.