Digging for Dinosaur Footprints

I am so excited to be taking part in a new series this week! Play, Craft and Learn with Dinosaurs is a series where some great bloggers share their ideas for fun with dinosaurs. There are dinosaur themed posts in the following areas - learning, fine motor, gross motor, arts and crafts and food. Today everyone is sharing posts for Fine Motor Play with a dinosaur twist. My kids used lots of fine motor muscles as they went Digging for Dinosaur Footprints.

You will need:

• Smooth flat rocks (we used 12)
• Acrylic paint
• Paint brush
• Plastic container
• Shaving cream
• Tongs

I had my kids help me search for some smooth, flat rocks outside. I needed them to be smooth and flat because I was planning to paint dinosaur footprints on them.

It really doesn't matter what color you use for your footprints. I had some gold acrylic paint on hand, so I used that. I am no artist and so my footprints might look like small crowns, but my kids could tell what they were. In fact when my daughter saw me painting she said "why are you painting footprints on rocks?"

When the paint on the rocks was dry (I left mine overnight), I filled a container with shaving cream and dropped the 12 rocks in.

I provided my daughter with some tongs and challenged her to find the "dinosaur footprints" in the shaving cream. She really wanted to use her bare hands, but I wanted her to get some fine motor practice so I suggested she pick them up using only her tongs.

This was more challenging than it looked. When she found a footprint, she would drop it into a cup. She found 9 footprints in the shaving cream.

My older daughter wanted a turn to find the footprints as well and she was determined to find all 12.

When she was finished, she wanted to play with the footprints.

She lined them up to make them look like actual footprints made by a walking dinosaur.

Keep an eye on on Mess for Less for more dinosaur themed posts this week. Also, you can find some other great dinosaur ideas here:

Dinosaur Playdough Mats from Craftulate

Dino Drop from Frogs and Snails and Puppy Dog Tails