Playdough Dinosaur Island

The kids were a bit keen to make more stuff with the playdough after Wednesday's playdough train table, so today when some of their friends came to visit, we set about making the dinosaur island I suggested might happen in my last post.

I got a load of random stuff out of the recycling bin (as usual, the starting point for anything that gets made around here). I pulled out a couple of pizza boxes, a frosted flakes box (my, isn't this making us look healthy!), some other boxes and an old cleaned aluminium foil roasting tray.

I stuck them all together and cut bits off to kind of make them a bit of an island shape. Then I cut a hole in the pizza box to sink a pyrex dish into (will be a lake/pond eventually)After the shape was kind of ok I packed it out a bit with crumpled up newspaper and then covered it all in aluminium foil, because that way we can pull off the playdough easily when the fun is over and reuse it yet again.The kids spent probably an hour sticking playdough on this island shape. Same playdough that we used for the train table on Wednesday. The kids were two four year olds, one three year old and one 18 month old. I was surprised that considering the ages of the kids, it still came out looking pretty respectable. I had to manage the build process by pulling out one colour of playdough at a time and then they took peices, rolled them flat with mini rolling pins, or just squishing them with their palms, then sticking the flat pieces to the island.The plastic funnel that was used for the volcano on the train table was added to the top of the island, because every dinosaur island needs the props for an extinction event (not willing to play meteors in my kitchen I'm afraid, so super volcano it is) The lava was some old plasticine that we had lurking in the craft bin.Once we had all the playdough on, I brought out all the toy dinosaurs and the bits and bobs of pretend plants, like lego trees and flowers and one lonely plastic palm tree. The island still looked a bit sparce, so we went out in the garden and pillaged a load of greenery and rocks to add to it.

Last thing was to add some water (with a drop of blue food colouring) to the dinosaur lake in the middle of the island. Yes, the green playdough around the lake got quite wet, but it was well worth losing that bit of playdough to the bin considering how excited the kids were about the lake being "real".

Lots of dinosaur splashing and roaring ensued. Awesome game of which dinosaurs eat which other dinosaurs too. I was surprised that they were able to pick out the carnivores and herbivores from our play dinos pretty easily and to make us look even healthier, the king of the dinosaurs (the giant t-rex) was a happy meal toy. Oh the shame.

I should go and pack it all away now and put the underlying structure back in the recycling bin, so we can play again another time.