“Can we hatch our own giganotosaurus egg?”
While cleaning out the Caterpickles archives this past week, I found this stub of a conversation from the spring of 2015.
“Mommyo,” The Eight-Year-Old asked, one fine afternoon as we were shopping for Easter egg supplies, “Why do we have to dye Easter eggs every year? Why can’t we ever do something fun, like hatch our own giganotosaurus egg?”
[image error]Yes, Mommyo, why can’t we have one of these guys roaming the house? I’m sure he and Canelo would get along just fine. (Art: “Giganotosaurus carolinii” is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)
Mommyo: “Hmm…. does your imagination still work?”
The Eight-Year-Old, earnestly: “Ninety percent of the time.”
Mommyo: “Ok then. Let’s get to work.”
Sadly, the Caterpickles archives did not record what, if anything happened next. I suspect that since we still have our cat and we don’t have an enormous dinosaur that any eggs that were hatched were imaginary. Still it got me wondering…
How hard would it be to craft our own dinosaur egg?
While this draft post has been lying neglected in the Caterpickles archives, How To has published a great video on YouTube that explains how to make these dinosaur eggs using a balloon, water bottle, plaster of paris, clay, foam, paint, and miscellaneous hand tools.
(The description for the video includes a complete list of supplies, for those of you interested in doing this at home.)
[image error]Dinosaur egg as shown in How To’s YouTube video. (Image from the How To video.)
We think those eggs look pretty amazing. Much better than your average dyed Easter egg.
The video takes only 12 minutes to watch, but it looks like the project itself will take a weekend or maybe a school vacation week to complete. Although to be fair, you’ll spend much of that time waiting for the resin that encases the eyes to dry.
This is one craft project parents will want to do alongside their middle schoolers.
Although the individual steps in this project look relatively simple, there are a lot of them. Some of the supplies will need careful handling as well — the saw, hammer, and epoxy/resin combo come to mind. (I suppose we could also get into some trouble with those paints.)
Still, it looks like fun to us.
Have you done this or something similar?
If so, we’d love to hear how it went. And of course, if The Twelve-Year-Old is able to talk me into hatching our own dinosaur egg over Thanksgiving break, I’ll tell you all about it. Eventually.
Related Links:
What to do with your old buttons, or Christmas crafts ALREADY? (Caterpickles)
