Dinosaur Treasure Stones

One of the fun things I did for Bubba's birthday was make Dinosaur Treasure Stones. It was a really fun activity to do together from beginning to end.

I found the link through Pinterest (of course) and gathered up all my supplies. Here's what you need:

1 cup flour

1 cup used coffee grounds (I got mine, along with a lot of weird looks, at the local Dunkin Donuts.)

1/2 cup salt

1/4 cup sand (I got a small bag at Michael's) 

1 cup water

Mix dry ingredients together. Slowly add the water to make a stiff dough; you may not need all of the water - you don't want it to be too runny. [I scratched my bowl pretty good with the sand, so make sure you use a bowl you don't mind to get scratched.]

Fresh stones on top; stones 6 days later

Hide surprise inside

Knead on a floured surface until fairly smooth. Break off dough in the desired stone size and hide the surprise in the center.

Set in a safe place until totally dry - at least 3-4 days. [I put my stones on parchment paper lined baking sheets; turned them over every 12 hours or so...it took closer to 4-5 days to dry.]

Once they are dry, they look and feel like stones. You can "carefully" break open the treasure stones using a hammer (we used a wooden hammer so they wouldn't damage the dinosaurs). If you put them in Tupperware, be advised they will release moisture and need to dry out again.

Deciding on the size of the prize inside makes a big difference - my dinosaurs were not very big at all yet I still ended up making two batches of dough and ended up with about 18 treasure stones. The stones were also a good size so as mentioned above, they took a long time to dry. It was a good lesson in patience for Bubba. 

We didn't have enough treasure stones for all the kids either at the party or at school, so after using them as part of the decorations at the party, we ended up breaking them open ourselves at home. The whole family had a good time breaking them open and finding the cool dinosaurs. Since the stones were just sand, flour & coffee, we just swept all the remains into the mulch when we were done.