Making a Dinosaur

Got a "Make a Dinosaur Kit" from the Natural History Museum when we went there a few days ago, along with some Dinosaur books.

The exhibition was very interesting but unfortunately, the LOs missed quite a lot of it as I couldn't really lift them up (the downside of having twins ... they have to stay in their pram pretty much the entire time we go out, cause that's the only way I can make sure one doesn't run off and get hurt or break something) to look inside each of the display cabinets but they enjoyed what they saw, in particular the "live" ones on display. The life-size T-rex (I think it was a T-rex) scared them, the little sleeping one a the exit made them giggle and some they tried to feed ... so overall a rather exciting exhibition I would say.

Anyway, so back to Dinosaur making. The kit came with (supposedly) everything you need. paper, glue, paint, template for all the "bits".

Sat little one's in their high-chairs and we were off. They seemed excited. All went well ... for about 5 mins. DS, who was in charge of ripping the paper to more manageable size, decided it would be more fun to throw everything on the floor rather than putting it into the designated box and DD, who was in charge of mixing the glue decided to put her hands in it and then onto herself..... and I, who was in charge of blowing the balloons to make the head and body, realized that I was scared of balloons (hence the small body, in relation to the head... I just couldn't bring myself to make it any bigger).

Anyway, eventually I managed to attach all the provided parts where they were supposed to go and we could start some papier macheing. This bit was relatively painless (especially because DS had already given up and was watch The Snowman instead. So I only had DD to deal with.) and fun but we did run out of glue fairly quickly and I had to improvise with some fabric glue I had in the cupboard. Head and leg fell off but I managed to stick it all back on with some masking tape before completing this stage.... BY MYSELF, as DD had also given up by now.

Once dried (left it overnight) we went on to paint it with the supplied paint (which ran out half way through and I had to use other paint!). We all enjoyed this part with no real drama and had some lunch while little Dino dried. Then LOs decided to make Little Dino pretty and got their arts and crafts box out and started sticking stuff on it.... with a little help from me of course.

So what do you think of Little Dino ? Maybe you can name her/him for us ?

Ps. In respons to Kitschycoo's blog, I did enjoy this one. Probably because it didn't matter if they made a mess.... papier mache is meant to be messy and we only had one colour paint at one time so didn't really matter how they painted Little Dino, it couldn't really go wrong and then finally the decoration part, it is supposed to be random so they couldn't really do that the wrong way either.... besides I had the glue and they only stuck things that they chose on, so mess was very limited.