After the paper mache dried completely, I cut off the balloon tails. The balloons pulled away from the inside of the egg. You could try to remove the balloon if you wish, I didn’t bother. Then I made a little paper mache to patch over the holes.
Once that dried, the kids painted their dino eggs. You could try to paint the eggs camouflage colors, but I let the kids pick the colors they wanted. Pixie completely covered hers, Bug went with a speckled theme and Fairy’s was more patchy – using all the colors.
These eggs could be used as fun Easter decorations. Fill a large egg with treats and use it as a pinata or maybe use smaller balloons and fill the eggs with little treats… instead of using plastic eggs.
The kids decided that they wanted to make a dinosaur nest after reading one of the Magic Schoolbus books where Frizzle’s class went looking for Maiasaurus eggs. So it was time to make some paper mache dino eggs.
My mom did this project in her preschool whenever she ran a dino unit. It can be quite messy… of course three kids at the dining room table is nothing compared to the year when I helped in her classroom with 24 students. Yikes! Preschoolers can easily do this project… though in my experience only about 1 in 4 will stick with it long enough to completely cover their egg.
I’ll give you one guess which one of my kiddos completed hers and helped me finish her siblings… Pixie girl of course. You can’t tell me that 2 year olds don’t have amazing attention spans.
You need one balloon per egg, a bowl to set the balloon in, newspaper shredded into long stripes (my kids loved that part) and a basic mixture of paper mache goo (I used approximately 1 part flour to 1 1/2 parts water mix).
Be sure to cover the entire balloon with paper mache, leaving just the knot exposed. (You might want to cover your table first – ours is a second hand table that we plan to refinish at some point in the future so I generally skip that step). Using a bright colored balloon can help you see any gaps. Try not to make it too thick or it will take forever to dry but you do want solid coverage or the egg will collapse when you pop the balloon.
Once the eggs have dried hard (btw – flip them over in the bowl occastionally so all the sides get air) we will paint them… I will post more when we get to that part.