Dinosaur Pasta Craft and an Adventure to Dinotropolis
Are your kids dinosaur mad? My son (aged 2) is heading that way. Lately, we’ve had to do the school run with two dinosaurs that he insists on taking in his buggy! One actually roars which is slightly inconvenient as we’re walking down the road! So, when we invited to explore Dinotropolis – we were very excited to introduce to all of our kiddos to some dinosaurs! Dinotropolis is a dinosaur adventure in the large shopping centre: Bluewater in Kent. It features ‘living’ animatronic dinosaurs, a dino jungle that is three storeys of soft play and a dino escape challenge as well as creative dinosaur activities.
Dinotropolis is very popular – it must be booked in advance and once booked, you can enjoy 1.5 hours of and exploration! There is so much to do in Dinotropolis for all ages, we have 4 kiddos aged 10-2 and there was tons to keep them all entertained for a whole day, let alone 1.5 hours!! There is a large soft play (and a smaller soft play for the under 4s) as well as a dino escape challenge (for the over 4s.) The Dino escape challenge was my son’s favourite activity – you have to have skill and patience to tackle the lasers and get past the dinosaur to press the light at the end! He loved it – I think it made him feel like a real spy! The soft play contains more unusual features such as air gun shooters and giant inflatable balls. The soft play is surrounded by animatronic dinosaurs. They’re amazingly lifelike – Archie, my two year old was very unsure of them and said ‘no want them eat me!’ Towards the end of our visit, he felt comfortable enough to wave hello and goodbye and stroke their tail though!
The highlight for all of us was the educational arts and craft area where there is a sandpit with projections. I’ve never seen anything like this before – if you built a sandcastle high enough – the projection turned it into a volcano! As you played in the sandpit, there were dinosaurs flying and roaming over your sand. There is also an area where you draw and design your own dinosaur on paper but then you can scan it and appears on a screen. This entertained all of our kids – even little Archie who got the gist of this straight away! I can’t remember how many dinosaurs the kids designed and watched appear but it was a lot of fun!
When your dino-rangers are all played out, there’s also a Fossil Café for relaxation and refueling that serves nutri-ceous meals and snacks.
We had so much fun at Dinotropolis and will be talking about the dinosaurs for a long time coming! You can find all ticket and pricing information here.
But we wanted to keep our dino trip going and so we were inspired to get our craft on and make a Pasta Painted Dinosaur.
If you’d like to make your own pasta painted dinosaur, you will need…..
- Pasta ( a variety of shapes is best)
- Paint (green, brown and purple were our favourites!)
- Glue
- Card (card is better than paper because it holds the weight of the pasta well.)
- Cotton Wool
- Clothes Pegs
- Draw a dinosaur shape on your card and then fill your dinosaur with glue.
- Stick down pasta on your glue to make your dinosaur!
- When the pasta is dry, attach your cotton wool with a clothes peg and dip in the paint to cover your pasta dinosaur with colour. The dabbing technique leaves a mottled colour and also means the pasta stays put and doesn’t come off.
- Leave to dry and hey presto! You have your very own painted pasta dinosaur!
