ROMKids Show: The One From The Dino Gallery

Tune in every Tuesday at 2 pm on Instagram Live as ROM Kids Coordinator and Camp Director Kiron Mukherjee combines his passion for children’s education with storytelling to bring to life science, history and art for you and your loved ones in the comfort of your own home. Kiron will share activities, easy at-home crafts, behind the scenes anecdotes and fun facts—all connected to the ROM collections.

This time on the ROMKids Show we venture back to the Museum and into our favourite place—the dinosaur gallery! We check in on our fossilized friends and make our own fizzing dinosaur eggs to hatch at home. Then Dr. David Evans zooms in to talk about the latest and greatest in palaeontology. What a dino-riffic way to return! 

• small dinosaur toy
• 3 cups baking soda
• 1/2 cup water
• food colouring
• mixing bowl
• spoon
• vinegar in a spray bottle

1. Grab your bowl, and mix the baking soda, water, and food colouring together until you get a sort of clumpy paste. If it's too wet add more baking soda. Too dry, add more water.

2. Use your hands to pack the mixture around your small dinosaur toy until it’s shaped like an egg. 

3. Put your dinosaur eggs on a tray and place them in the freezer until they've hardened (about 3 hours). If you're feeling extra creative, use this time to make a dinosaur nest out of household and backyard materials, like sticks, yarn, maybe even some leaves!

4. Take your eggs out of the freezer and place them in your nest, or another safe place where you can get messy. Then spray your eggs with vinegar. Spoiler alert! When the vinegar and baking soda mix, it triggers a chemical reaction-- the baking soda starts fizzing away, hatching your dinosaur toy!

As the ROMKids Coordinator & Camp Director, Kiron is the public face of the Royal Ontario Museum’s family and children’s programs. Kiron started volunteering at the ROM at age 14 and has never looked back. Though he majored in history at York University, Kiron also considers his early years as a ROMKids camper to be a highly formative part of his education. Now, he strives to provide engaging and educational kids’ programming so that future generations can look back on their ROM experiences as fondly as he has.