This is a snack we sent to my daughter’s nursery school class during “D” week.  We combined some Chex mix recipes and came up with a dinosaur style snack mix.  The idea was to have kids dig for dinosaur bones and dinosaur eggs in the snack mix.

Ingredients

• 2 c. Corn Chex cereal
• 2 c. Rice Chex cereal
• 1 1/2 c. oyster crackers
• 1/2 c. small pretzel sticks or pretzel snaps
• 2 c. graham sticks (dinosaur bones) or Stauffer’s original animal crackers (dinosaurs)
• 6 oz. dried fruit (we liked a combination of dried blueberries, cranberries, and cherries)
• 1 c. yogurt-covered raisins (dinosaur eggs)
• 5-6 T. butter, melted
• 2 T. sugar
• 2 t. ground cinnamon
• 1/2 t. ground nutmeg

Directions

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Spray 13×9 pan with nonstick cooking spray.
• Place cereals, oyster crackers, pretzels, and graham sticks in a large bowl; mix lightly.
• Combine butter, sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg in small bowl; mix well.  Drizzle evenly over cereal mixture.  Toss to coat. **If the mixture is pretty dry, mix another half batch of butter/sugar/spice and add.
• Spread the coated cereal mixture in an even layer on the pan.
• Bake 10 to 12 minutes or until golden brown, stirring gently halfway through.  Cool completely.  Stir in dried fruit and yogurt-covered raisins.

Variations

• Instead of graham sticks or animal crackers, you could use mini-dinosaur grahams.  I can’t ever find these at my grocery store, but I think they are out there.
• For “G” week, you could make Gorilla Grub and substitute the yogurt-covered raisins and dried fruit for plain raisins and dried banana chips. You could also call this Monkey Mix.