Theory Thursday: Volcano Fossil

There is a lady at our church that gives us all sorts of fun school things. She gave us the egg spinner, the JELL-O egg mold, a ton of file folder games, and a few other things.

She gave Jake a special gift last weekend, just because. She even wrapped it up for him. You can bet he was super excited! And then, once he saw what it was, he was even more excited! No more of this fake paleontologist stuff. He was going to excavate his very own fossil.

The kit came with a cute little shovel and a hardened-sand volcano.

Jake went right to work chipping away the sand.

We were both surprised just how much work it was.

And how much of a mess it made.

Eventually though, he made enough progress to spot the treasure inside.

It still took a while longer to work away the sand from the rest of the fossil.

 Success! You can see just how happy his blurry little face was once he finally broke the fossil loose.

We're not exactly sure what it is. It just looks like a rock to me, and maybe it is, but maybe it is a real fossil. Jake was confused at first. He was under the assumption that all fossils are dinosaur bones. It led the way for a discussion about what fossil are. 

It was a perfect learning experience!

I wish I would have kept track of how long the activity took him. It was very time-consuming, which is a good thing. Of course, we had to keep the sand so we can wet it, hide a new treasure inside, and practice paleontology all over again! It's the gift that keeps on giving.