Make a large batch of coffee salt dough?

Question

I would like to fill my son's sand table with coffee salt dough, the kind that air hardens and you make dinosaur fossil eggs with. I would need a large batch recipe and an idea of the drying time, his birthday is on saturday.

Answer 1

buy moon sand

Answer 2

I wouldn't fill the table with this because it isn't going to harden by Saturday in that kind of quantity and even if it did it would ruin the table to be used with sand again.

What you may want to do instead is get a dinosaur skeleton model (like at a science store or toy shop) and then dampen his sand table down with some water. press the bones into the sand in the shape of the dinosaur it is supposed to be and then cover it with a light layer of dry sand.  Provide them with whisk brooms, buckets, small sand shovels etc.. for them to "dig" like an archeologist with. If you do it the night before the party the sand that was wet should dry slightly hard and be ready to go. The sand won't ruin then and it can be crumbled and played in normally again after your party.

If you don't want to do a model and dig that way you could always get some plain white plastic eggs and put your dinos inside.  If you don't have the white ones around, use the colored ones and paint them once filled with white acryllic paint and let them dry in an empty egg carton before burying.

Salt dough takes at least a week just for the outside to dry crust and you usually need to bake it to fully harden- not something you'll be able to do with a sand table!