Dinosaur dig tuff tray

I love coming up with new activity ideas using dinosaurs, which are my son's favourite toys. The latest tuff tray I tried was a dinosaur dig tray.

What you need to make your Tuff Tray

Tuff tray
Toy Dinosaurs – smaller ones are better here.
Something to cover the dinosaurs with. I personally used old cereal, which I had blended down together after using it for another activity. You could also use things like sand, rice or real mud.
Brushes.

How to set up the activity

This was super simple to set up. I spread out the dinosaurs on the tray, then covered them with our cereal mixture, making sure all the dinosaurs were hidden. I then added some brushes that the children could use to gently excavate the dinosaurs with and it was ready to go.

My 5 and 6-year-old children really loved this activity and had a great time trying to find the dinosaurs and guess which ones they had as they brushed away at them.

Ways to adapt the activity

I wanted to make this a bit more challenging for my son, so I added a ‘Dinosaur dig findings sheet’ to the end of the activity. I wrote down things that had to be recorded, including how many dinosaurs they had found, how many different types of species they had found and finally, I really tested him but asking if he could name all of the species of dinosaurs.

This add-on turned the activity from a fun edible tuff tray activity that my children could get really hands-on with, to an activity where they needed to count, write and practice their spellings.

For more fun activities for kids click here