The baby dinosaur hatches when the clothes peg is opened — Create this hatching baby dinosaur by following the instructions below

Make a hatching dinosaur egg

By Lisa Hendry

Like birds - the dinosaurs we can see around us today - prehistoric dinosaurs hatched from eggs. Here's how to create your very own dinosaur egg that hatches.

You will need:

a small piece of card (part of an old cereal packet will do)

our template (if using) PDF (157KB)

scissors

a pencil and colouring pencils (optional)

a clothes peg

a glue stick

Hatching dinosaur equipment - template, card, glue, colouring pencils, clothes peg and scissors — Everything you need to make the hatching dinosaur egg. Use whatever colour pencils you prefer.

If you like gluing, you might enjoy this version of the activity best:

1. Print out our template of an egg and a baby Maiasaura dinosaur.

2. Glue them to the piece of card.

3. Cut around the outline of the egg as well as the zigzag to cut the egg in half.

4. Colour in the baby dinosaur, then cut it out.

5. Lay the peg on the table. Apply glue to both halves on the side of the peg facing you.

6. Stick each piece of the egg onto a half of the peg. Make sure the pieces meet in the middle when the peg is closed and that the card doesn't cover the peg's hinge. This can be quite fiddly.

7. Apply glue to the bottom part of the dinosaur, on the same side as the drawing. Stick it to the back of the bottom half of the peg, so you can see the creature when the peg is open.

8. Open the peg. Ta-da! Your baby dinosaur is hatching!

Note: children will probably need some help cutting out the egg and baby dinosaur, as the pieces are quite small.

Did you know?

Maiasaura is a duck-billed dinosaur that lived around 80 to 75 million years ago. Lots of fossils of this dinosaur, as well as nests and eggs, have been found at a site called Egg Mountain in the USA. The name Maiasaura means 'good mother lizard', because its fossils provided some of the first evidence of parental care by a dinosaur.

The finished dinosaur egg activity, showing the egg unhatched because the peg is closed

The finished hatching egg, showing someone's fingers pinching the ends of the peg together so that the egg splits apart and the baby dinosaur is revealed

How to adapt the activity to involve drawing

If you prefer to draw or you don't have access to a printer, you could replace steps 1-3 above with the following:

1. Draw an egg on the piece of card. If you are using a standard-sized peg, it works best if the egg is about 2.5-3 centimetres wide.

2. Carefully cut out the two halves of the egg.

3. Draw a baby dinosaur on the leftover card. You can either make up your own dinosaur, or copy the baby Maiasaura we have provided. Make sure your dinosaur is smaller than your egg.

Did you know?

Like bird eggs, dinosaur eggs occur in different shapes and sizes. The smallest are about the size of tennis balls and the largest are like giant footballs, nearly half a metre across. While some eggs were rather round, others were long and thin.