We found dinosaur eggs in our apartment this weekend! Okay, maybe not really, but these giant balloon-sized eggs are sure to get your kiddos excited, even if they helped make them and remember that they started out as balloons!

To start, slightly inflate a balloon (large ones work best for this game) and insert a small toy dinosaur into each – be careful not to tear the plastic of the balloon with any spikes i.e. t-rex works better than stegosaurus here, folks. Inflate the balloon the rest of the way.

At this point, I told Travis we had baby dinosaurs that would be hatching soon, but that we needed to help the eggs incubate. It was time to get to work with our papier-mache!

If you’ve never made papier-mache at home, don’t be intimidated; it’s just one part flour to one part water. We mixed together our goop in a baking pan, which I set out along with a stack of torn newspaper.

Travis had way more fun simply throwing the newspaper into the goop…

…and stirring it with a spoon…

…but I managed to cover our balloons in the meantime. Set them aside overnight to dry.

Now came the magic. The next morning, I popped the balloons inside with a sharp pin. This cracked the papier-mache coating perfectly, so the eggs looked like the babies were just starting to hatch.

Travis had so much fun opening the eggs the rest of the way to reveal the dinos inside!

Note: If you like, you can paint your eggs before “hatching” them, but Travis was too excited to rip them apart, so we skipped that step!