No Time For Flash Cards

preschool activities, preschool crafts, and preschool books.

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Snail Craft

This took a long time ( mostly drying) and I won’t lie, I did a good amount of this craft, I should have made the snail half the size for a toddler and cut the tissue paper much larger. It would be great for a 4-5 year old. I love the final result though especially the texture.

  1. Gather your materials. You will need some heavy paper ( we are using a paper grocery bag), a marker( darker will be better), tissue paper of various colors, one sheet of plain white paper big enough for the snail, scissors, googly eyes, tape and a pipe cleaner.
  2. Start by drawing a snail and a snail head- don’t worry if it’s perfect it will all be covered anyway. * if you have a really little guy you could hand them some markers to color the snail , that would help fill in the gaps if they aren’t too enthusiastic about adding so many pieces of tissue paper.
  3. Cut the tissue paper into small pieces, another tip for younger ones, use bigger pieces. This was my mistake I made ours way too small and my son only put about 1/4 of the paper you see on.
  4. Add LOTS of glue
  5. Add your tissue paper
  6. Add some more glue
  7. Add more tissue paper. See why I should have made it smaller? Yeah the wee boy was off playing garbage trucks telling me ” I share project,mommy’s turn” like how he spun it ?
  8. Cover the snail head in just one color. Let dry.
  9. Cut the head out and add googly eyes. Let dry
  10. Cut the snail out following the marker lines if you can. It should spiral . Go back a second time and trim it all the way along so there is extra space.
  11. Glue the head on and let dry ( see snails pace… the end result is worth it, hang on!! )
  12. Add the pipe cleaner by poking tow small holes and threading one through.
  13. Tape the snail onto a plain white sheet of paper. I couldn’t wait for more glue to dry.

Books!

“Ace Lacewing: Bug Detective” by David Bierdrzycki is such a fun read, I started it thinking it would go over my son’s head but he sat listening the whole time. The mystery begins with a missing Queen be and will have you guessing who is behind her disappearanceas Ace tries to solve it. There was a lot of humor that was lost on my 2 year old but the fun Dick Tracy like illustrations kept him happy while I snickered at the jokes he missed. Very fun read for kids that aren’t yet ready for a chapter book but outgrowing pictures ones.” Bob and Otto” by Robert O. Bruel is a lovely story about 2 friends who must part ways , in this case because one is a caterpillar who needs to build a chrysalis and the other an earth worm who needs to dig deep into the ground. What I like about this book is that it goes on to explain that the earth worm’s digging is vital for the trees to grow so that the caterpillar can eat the leaves and turn into a butterfly. I like the lesson about how we all play a part!

“Jazz Fly” written and performed by Matthew Gollub is a fun idea, a book with a CD. The story is about a fly who plays drums in a jazz band, on his way to the gig he gets lost. Trying to find his way back he asks different animals for directions but they just make sounds at him. Later those sounds save jazz fly and his band! I liked the book and the music on the CD as well but my son had no interest which shocked me. I really thought he would like it, he loves Jazz . The monochromatic illustrations by Karen Hanke were cute but I think the lack of color while stylistically cool didn’t grab my son’s attention. The CD included got my son off the couch and dancing in the playroom until the author started narrating, at which point my son stopped playing air upright bass and asked to stop the CD. I’ll try this book again when he’s older.

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17 Comments

  2. Merynne says

    My kids did this same thing with cross hangings today! You can also do a similar project with sticky-back foam. Just cut out your shape, remove the paper, and push the tissue paper down on the sticky part. My kids like to crumple the little pieces of tissue paper a bit to make them stick out:)

    Okay, now for a question…
    What do you do with all of his wonderful finished projects?

    We ocassionally send something to grandparents, and I keep a 3-ring binder handy for each kid with empty page protectors. We just slide regular sized pages into them if they are special. But I hate just throwing away the rest…

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  6. Allie says

    Thanks

    Merynne- I feel no shame throwing things out /recycling them. I keep some but most are salvaged for parts ( googly eyes are removed and reused ) . I have pictures of all the crafts and plan..to make a photo book of them all.

    Also great idea about the sticky back foam!

    Another option Carisa is to use contact paper and make a sun catcher – I was this close to doing that for this craft instead.

    Oh and OJ- I adore that pucker too, he does it when he's thinking about anything hehehe.

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