Frozen Dinosaur Eggs Ice Excavation Activity

Kids love dinosaurs, and kids love ice. Put them together, and you get one of the best activities ever! 

In this dinosaur ice excavation activity, your kid will get to excavate the dinosaurs from their frozen eggs. Not only does this learning activity involve science and fine motor skills, but your kids will also have lots of fun playing with water and exploring various tools.

Ice Dinosaur Egg Balls

How to Make Frozen Dinosaur Eggs

Materials:

Directions:

  1. Stretch open the top of the balloon. If possible, have a helper insert the dinosaur while you hold the balloon open with both hands.
    Ice Dinosaur Egg in Balloon
  2. Fill the balloon with water. You don’t need a lot of water, just enough to cover the entire dinosaur toy.
  3. Squeeze the air out of the balloon and tie it up.
    Ice Dinosaur Egg Filled with Water
  4. Put the balloons in the freezer and wait until the water to be frozen. If you are not sure how long to wait, you may want to leave the balloons in the freezer overnight just in case.
  5. Once the balloon dinosaur eggs are frozen, cut off the knot and peel off the balloon.
    Ice Dinosaur Egg Cut Off Top

Aren’t the ice dinosaur eggs pretty? I just love making ice in balloons because the ball-shaped ice reminds me of a beautiful quartz crystal. Too bad they melt so fast!

Icy Dinosaur Egg

If you don’t have balloons at home, you can also make dinosaur eggs with small bowls or containers. They won’t have the egg shape, but your kids can still have lots of fun excavating the dinosaurs. If you have trouble getting the ice out of the container, just set the container in a bowl of warm water to melt the ice slightly.

Ice Dinosaur Eggs Excavation

To melt and hatch the icy dino eggs, you can use a variety of excavation tools. My kids know right away what can melt ice – salt and hot water. This is not their first rodeo with ice excavation!

You can use whatever you would like to help the baby dinosaurs hatch. I recommend asking your kids to see what they believe are the best tools to use and let them try all of them out!

Make sure you put the frozen dinosaur eggs in a container that would catch all the water to avoid a wet mess. My kids decided they want to use pipettes, salt, chopsticks, and warm water to melt and break the ice. 

Icy Dinosaur Egg Shaking Salt

First, they sprinkled some salt on one of the ice dino eggs. While waiting for the salt to melt the ice, they moved on to try and break out another egg with brut force. Basically, just taking a chopstick and stabbed at the egg until the ice starts chipping off.

Whenever they started to get impatient, they would squirt some warm water on the eggs using the pipettes, and then keep chipping away.

Ice Dinosaur Egg with Salt

The salt made cool patterns on the frozen eggs as they melt the ice. We squirted some warm water on those eggs to melt the salt and sprinkled the eggs again with fresh salt.

Ice Dinosaur Egg Hot Water

Then the whole process of using the salt, chopstick, warm water, etc. repeated itself until all the dinosaurs are out of their frozen eggs!

Final Thoughts on the Dinosaur Ice Eggs

You would think after freezing LEGO Minifigures and giant insects from ice, my kids would be tired of this experiment. But nope! They enjoyed every moment of hatching the baby dinosaurs from their frozen eggs. 

The lesson here is that don’t be afraid to repeat similar experiments with your kids. As they grow older, they notice different things and approach the experiments from different angles. It’s very interesting as a mom to hear their hypothesis and watch them work.

Looking for more dinosaur activities? Check out:

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