DIY Dinosaur theme Garden in Recycled Tyre

Do you have an old tire floating around? Tires can be re-purposed for so many things. We have one stuck in the ground to climb all over and another was recently turned into a dinosaur garden. 

We have been expanding our outdoor area, near by we have a cool Water Wall out of PVC Pipe, & of course our Magnificent Mud Kitchen that we are in the process of renovating (stay tuned for that), then we have some Outdoor Balance Stumps. Now for the DIY tire Garden, its cute, little and practical for any size yard and you could really do it in any theme...  Fairies, gnomes, bugs, farm animals to give you a few ideas!

To make this outdoor play space all I did was put the tire into position, spray paint it fluro bright yellow, fill with soil and then Dimples helped create a Dinosaur garden for play and to create a fun feel to his outdoor play space. First we started talking about what we need to do to keep the plants growing, how to look after them and then the discussion lead to herbivores & dinosaurs, their habitat and environment, what they eat/drink and so on which fueled his pretend play. 

We added a couple of soft succulents that are cheap and tolerable to harsh conditions. Then a curved piece of drift wood fit perfectly around the center of the tire, from there on Dimples added stones and shells. The dinosaurs needed a drink or a pool so we planted an old bowl filled it with water and then the finishing touches were of course the dinosaurs. After playing for a while Dimples added a small stick for a bridge and some lucky stones. It makes a cute addition to the outdoor play are and encourages outside physical and imaginative play

Learning Concepts:
Recycle & Reuse
Planting and keeping plants
Physical/Active Play
Connecting with the outdoors
Imaginative & Pretend play
Dinosaur Habitats & environments

Follow on:
DIY baked Dinosaur fossils
Dig for dinosaurs near by
Dinosaur Paint Stomping

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How do you get the kids to be enthusiastic about Outdoor Play?

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Happy Adventures

Dinosaur Fossil Discovery

Dimples has been doing some Dinosaur Activities at preschool so I thought I would extend on this at home.  He has always loved dinosaurs and we have done Dino fossils before but this time I tried to make them more realistic so he can link the fun he has had preschool to the fun he has with his dinosaurs at home.

It was a success, they turned out much better and looked real!

My little master Chef helped mix up a batch of Salt Dough, see the directions below. To make them look as realistic as possible we added some black food colouring, so that they looked like real rock fossils. It worked well, they turned into a dark grey rock colour. We made some extra fossils so he could give them to his preschool group and we did a little palaeontology digging with his favourite ones.

They were so easy to make and Dimples loved pressing his dino toys into the dough and inspecting how they looked, he looked closely at the details and did a few experiments with some foot prints before deciding which ones worked best.

 How to make Realistic Salt Dough Fossils

Ingredients:      
1 cup cooking salt,
2 cups of flour
1 cup hot water,
Food colour or tempura paint (we used black food colouring)

Directions: 

Mix together salt and flour, gradually add the hot water.

If you want to add tempura paint or food colouring to your fossils add it into the water first.

Mix into a dough consistency and then knead the dough for 5 minutes until smooth. 

Divide the dough into small rock shapes, make them roughly the same thickness and size so that they bake evenly.

Gather some toys that can be pressed in to form your fossils (plastic animals & dinosaurs feet and body parts work well). We had some skeleton Dinosaurs which worked perfectly and some plastic dinosaurs with realistic feet shapes.

The salt dough can be air dried but for a better quicker result bake it slowly on low heat until rock hard.  We baked them on 120 degrees for an hour and a half but this depends on the size of your fossils. You can double check if they are dried properly by inspecting the bottom, it should be hard and evenly cooked all over without the 'dough' look. 

Once they're cooled  off they can be painted and decorated or left as is.

Play Idea:

Bury them in a sand box to be “discovered” (if you have a large sand box you could put a small flag above where they are buried). 

Then provide your pre-schooler with a small spade, pick and some paint brushes.

Once they find it, they can un-cover it and brush the sand off.
You can ask them to be very careful not to break or damage the fossil and get them to brush around them as a real palaeontologist would.

The discovered fossils can then be added to small world play and put on display.

Note: If the salt dough fossils get wet they will turn back to dough and crumble away.




Happy Adventures