One of the Wechts

Hi all,

Has anyone ever made their own excavation rock? Plaster of Paris is too hard.
My 9 yod is planning a B day party. She wants to do a scavenger hunt and she also wants everyone to be able to dig for treasure.
The ones that you buy are way too expensive, and plastic dinosaurs are not the treasure she wants to hide : )
Any ideas would be appreciated.

Beth in MD (finding that my creative juices are a little low this month)
FYI it is a camp out theme overall

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Deb Lewis

***Has anyone ever made their own excavation rock? ***

We did this with moderate success using reptile sand and watery glue.
Reptile sand is fine grain sand used in reptile tanks but you could
probably use any fine sand and get a better price. We mixed the watered
down glue and sand in an old casserole dish, shoved the dino down inside
and patted the sand over the top. It took several days to dry hard.

Maybe clumping cat letter would work, but I think that would be more
expensive than a bag of sand from the home improvement store.

Deb L

Deb Lewis

***clumping cat letter ***

I'd like to buy a different vowel. I think a clumping cat letter would
be the wad of paper a cat barfs up after sorting your mail. I don't
recommend cat barf as an ingredient in dino excavation sand.

Deb L

Jill Parmer

<<<Has anyone ever made their own excavation rock? Plaster of Paris is too
hard.>>>

I had a friend make some with Plaster of Paris and vermiculite. It was
harder to break than the packaged dino boxes. You'd have to play with
ratios; I'm guessing she had 50:50, and I thought that if I ever made any I
would increased the vermiculite.

~Jill

Angela S.

We made treasure stones once. We got the recipe off Kids Concoctions on
PBS. Although ours did look kind of like rocks, they sure didn't feel like
them because they weren't as hard but it was fun. Here it is.

1 cup flour,1 cup used coffee grinds,1/2 cup salt,1/4 cup sand,3/4 cup
water. Mix all dry ingredients together in a medium bowl. Slowly add water
and knead until the mixture is the consistency of bread dough. Break off a
piece of dough and roll it into the size of a baseball. Make a hole in the
center of the ball big enough to hide treasures in. Fill the hole with
treasures and seal with some extra dough. Let your Treasure Stone air-dry
for 2-3 days or until hard, or bake in the oven on a cookie sheet at 150
degrees for 15-20 minutes. You can also add 1 Tbs of powdered tempera paint
to tint your Treasure Stones different colors.

Angela
game-enthusiast@...


> Has anyone ever made their own excavation rock

Angela S.

And I meant to mention that you couldn't chisel them open because they do
feel like cooked play dough. But if you only are concerned with finding the
rocks and getting the treasures out, that recipe would work fine. (and it's
cheap)

Angela
game-enthusiast@...

[email protected]

What about regular yard dirt with the addition of some elmer's glue mixed
with the water?

Those permanent sand castles they used to make were done that way, I think
(and you wouldn't want to use THAT much glue). Maybe don't put the glue-dirt
right on the dinosaur either, or it might stick to it too much. Maybe just
mud-ball the dino and then use more of the same dirt but with glue and water?


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[email protected]

In a message dated 9/22/05 6:13:55 AM, game-enthusiast@... writes:


> Although ours did look kind of like rocks, they sure didn't feel like
> them because they weren't as hard but it was fun. 
>

Dinosaurs are not found in hard-hard rocks anyway, but in sandstone that can
be scratched off with any old tool, usually. Sometimes it's not even
sandSTONE yet, just still a layer of compacted sand (not loose, but not rock) between
layers of harder stuff, like under a layer of volcanic ash or rock.

The bones they're "excavating" in labs at the museums or universities,
they're taking off plaster of paris that THEY put on so the bones could be moved.

Sandra


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