Does Your Kid Love Dirt? I Got the Thing for You! The Ultimate Dinosaur Dig Kit [Review]

 

My boys love dirt! Especially my youngest. This past spring we signed him up for t-ball and guess what his favorite part was. The dirt! He was always kneeling down to play in it or shuffling his feet around to watch it fly. Boys will be boys I guess. It was one of those shaking my head moments and thinking, “Why my kid!?”. I hope you other mom's of boys know what I am talking about.

Anyway, I recently found the perfect activity to keep my little mud dauber entertained – the Ultimate Dinosaur Dig Kit! This kit is the perfect gift for the mud-loving, dinosaur hugger in your life.

This kit comes with everything needed to excavate your very own plastic T-Rex dinosaur and supposedly real fossils. I don't know how real these fossils really are but it's fun to think they are the real McCoy nonetheless.

UPDATE: Here's what The Discover with Dr. Cool Team had to say about the legitimacy of their fossils:

 I did want to mention that the fossils are indeed genuine. We source them from around the world and that is one of the main things that truly does differentiate our products.

That's great news, huh? Kids will think that's extra cool. I know mine loved that fact!

Eighteen dinosaur bones and three fossils are hidden within a plaster digging block. You use the handy tools included (digging tool, magnifier, and brush) to uncover new bones around every corner. I can't tell you how many times I heard, “This is SO cool!”, “Whoa!”, and “Awesome!” come out of my four-year-olds mouth. It was like a scavenger hunt made just for him. He loved it!

After he unearthed the bones we placed them in some water to soak so we could see our “treasure” better. The plaster gets into the bone's little grooves but it cleans up pretty well by just soaking the pieces as you go.

It took my son about 2 hours to find all of the bones/fossils and put the dinosaur together. That is saying a lot if you know how short a four-year-olds attention span is. I can barely get him to color for five minutes but he was so enthralled by the Ultimate Dinosaur Dig Kit he kept going and going.

I will have to say this is not a clean activity by any means. Definitely do this outside. The plaster digging block gets crumbled into tiny pieces and dust that gets everywhere. That's half the fun for the little guys though. So dig in! Outside!!

My only real concern with the Ultimate Dinosaur Dig Kit was how little hands don't have the best digging control. The digging tool is decently pointy on one end (the best end for digging) and my son would accidentally jab himself. Granted this kit is meant for kids six years old and older but I couldn't resist letting my biggest dirt fan dig in. He's almost five. Close enough. When it would get too tough for him to dig I would pour a little water on the digging block to soften it up. Again, another reason why I vote for this to be an outside activity.

The kit also comes with an adventure guide that explains some neat dinosaur fossil and bone facts while the activity booklet boasts things like word searches, hidden pictures, mazes, dot to dots and more. It's an all-around informative hands-on activity. While my 4-year-old was still a bit too young for some of the activities in the booklet he loved counting each dinosaur piece and fossil he found along the way.

On a side note, several of our dinosaur pieces were stuck together. So while we broke that plaster block into bits making sure we didn't miss anything – The “lost” pieces were already connected to the bones we had already found. Just glad my counting skills weren't off that bad!

My son and I extremely enjoyed the Ultimate Dinosaur Dig Kit. It was SO much fun and very informative. A good mix of play and education. A+++. I couldn't recommend it more.

What is your kid's favorite activity set? Are you a dinosaur fan?

Disclosure: I received one or more of the products mentioned above for free using Tomoson.com. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers.