Digging for Fossils in Chocolate Chip Cookies

We searched for "fossils" in chocolate chip cookies. Our class LOVED this activity. We started out of dinosaur unit with many dinosaur books and worked our way towards the chocolate chip cookie excavation.

For this activity we used:
-Chocolate Chip Cookies
-Toothpicks

 While exploring about dinosaurs, we discovered that paleontologists use dinosaur bones and fossils to figure out what life on earth was like a long time ago.We also talked about the types of tools that paleontologists use to dig for fossils like shovels, picks, and brushes to clean the bones carefully.  I gave each of the students a cookie and explained that we were going to be paleontologists and this cookie was going to be our piece of earth to explore.

The students closely examined their piece of earth to see how many dinosaur bones (chocolate chips) they thought they would find.  We recorded their findings from the excavation on our data sheets.  


The Students  got to work using their specialized tool (a toothpick) to carefully dig their bones (chocolate chips) out of their cookies.  This was a great activity for fine motor skills.  As we worked, I encouraged the students to describe what they were seeing and feeling.


They were even more excited to discover that there were more dinosaur bones on the bottom of their pieces of earth!  Once the they had removed all the bones they could (some whole and some in pieces), we used our counting skills to find out how many bones we found and record them on our data sheet...and then, we ATE them!