Dino Day with the Co-op

**Old Post that I thought I published, but didn't**

Today was my day for co-op (my kids and two others - age 2.5 and 3), which I always enjoy because it's more fun to do some activities with a group of kids. For example, the kids played paleontologist in the sand/water table, digging for the previously made fossils and bones that I cleaned and bleached from a recent chicken and our Thanksgiving turkey. I think this was more fun for the group because they could talk about what they were finding and the pretend play was richer.

To set up the dig site, I dragged our sand/water table from the back yard to our kitchen. I did this to facilitate my adding (and later retrieving) the bones easier and because it was a little cold for outdoor water play. Each child got a shovel and a paintbrush to excavate for the dinosaur bones. I was careful not to include any bones that had sharp edges or that were too small (my 10 month old was playing in the sand table too). The bones themselves were cleaned off after I made chicken broth and turkey broth from the previously roasted carcasses. After rinsing and rubbing all the meat remnants off, I put the bones in a bowl full of bleach for 30 minutes or so and then rinsed before laying them out to dry on rags. I normally don't like using bleach as a disinfectant because I favor natural disinfectants made from thymol, but since these were real animal bones, I wanted to make sure that they were relatively free from bacteria before introducing them into the children's environment.

We talked about how fossilized bones and fossils themselves are very fragile, so paleontologists us special tools that move dust and dirt away from the findings, but are gentle to the piece itself, like paint brushes. The children really enjoyed this activity and went around calling themselves paleontologists discovering dinosaurs.

We also baked and decorated Gingerbread stegosauruses and t-rexes, made pteranodon hats from newspaper (Ross, 1997), and played with the dinosaurs, amongst other toys. It was a very successful co-op day. Admitedly, these activities (with the exception of the dig) are not heavy on the content, but as today was (I believe) a relatively new foray into dinosaur knowledge for the other kids, I think it sparked the interest and gave them a few basics to start with.