Create your very own snake friend in this fun sensory activity! You can make these slithery snakes to play with or to hang as a fun decoration! This activity is a great way to use supplies you can find in your home to create something new and explore the sensory aspects of these materials!
Supplies:
- Scissors
- Glue
- Rolling pin
- 2-3 colors of paint
- Scotch tape
- 3 paper plates
- 1 piece of red construction paper (cardstock works great too!)
- Bubble wrap
- Newspaper or other material to cover your workspace
- 2 googly eyes
- Paintbrush
- A pencil
Before we start, make sure you have gathered all of your supplies, including a paper towel to wipe off your hands, as well as something to cover the table you are working on, because it can get a little messy!! If you are still learning how to use scissors, it might help to have a caregiver nearby just in case!
Step 1: Now that we have our supplies, let’s get started! First, we are going to start by cutting the body for our snake! To do this, you will need to grab 1 of the paper plates, your pencil, and your scissors! It’s easiest to draw the spiral shape first. To do this, place the tip of your pencil in the center of the plate and spin the plate in a circle, slowly starting to move your pencil towards the edge of the plate without picking it up. Keep spinning the plate until your pencil has reached the edge!
Now use your scissors to cut along the pencil lines starting from the outside of the plate and working your way in. Be sure to stop about an inch prior to the center of the plate so your snake can have a head!
Step 2: Now, you can set aside that paper plate and grab your 2nd paper plate. Put the paper plate that is the body of your snake and set it on top of your 2nd paper plate. This will help keep the cut paper plate from moving around when you use the rolling pin!
Step 3: Great! Now go ahead and grab the tape, your bubble wrap, scissors and your rolling pin! Measure out your piece of bubble wrap to be the length of the body of your rolling pin.
Now, take one piece of tape and tape one side of the bubble wrap to the rolling pin.
Wrap the bubble wrap around until you get to the other end and put a second piece of table on the rolling pin to hold that side down.
Step 4: Perfect! Grab your last paper plate, your paint brush, and your 2-3 paint colors! Squeeze out a quarter size amount of paint for each color onto the paper plate.
Now we are ready to paint! Grab your paintbrush and dip it in one color of paint and start painting one side of the rolling pin, on top of the bubble wrap.
It is best to only paint a small section of the bubble wrap in case you need to set down the rolling pin. You can use all of the colors to paint on the rolling pin.
Step 5: Great job! Now take your rolling pin and roll it over top of your stacked plates. Keep adding paint to the rolling pin and rolling it over your snake until it looks how you want it! Push the rolling pin back and forth to make it move! I wanted my snake to be completely covered with paint and very colorful, so I made sure to keep pushing the rolling pin until there was very little of the white on the plate showing. But just
remember, every snake looks different, so there’s no right or wrong answer on how to do this!
Step 6: It looks great! Before we move on, we’ll need to throw away the bubble wrap. Undo the tape and unravel the bubble wrap from the rolling pin and throw it away in the trash! If you need to wipe off your hands or the rolling pin, you can use a wet paper towel!
Step 7: Awesome! While our paper plate snake is drying, we are going to work on cutting out the snake’s tongue! Go ahead and grab your red paper and your scissors. Cut a small rectangle out of the paper - it can be however big you want - I’d start with something the size of a standard square eraser!
From here, you can keep making it smaller until it looks like it will fit the head of your snake! Mine is about as thick as the blades on my scissors!
Step 8: Now that you have your rectangle, on 1 of the short sides cut from the corner to the middle. Now, repeat on the other side - creating a ‘V’. Perfect now the snake’s tongue is ready to go!
Step 9: Next go ahead and grab both of the googly eyes! Place a small dot of glue on the back of the googly eyes and put them on the head of your snake, which is the part at the center of the plate.
Step 10: You now can plate a small dot of glue on the tongue! It will go on the short edge of the rectangle that didn’t have the triangle cut out of it!
Slide it under the head of the snake and then push down for 2-3 seconds. When you let go, it should look like the snake has a tongue!
Step 11: That looks amazing! Now you have your own paper plate snake! If it’s still a little wet, you might need to let it dry for 15-20 more minutes before playing with it or hanging it up! But you can make more snakes of all sorts of different colors while you wait!
~ Made By: Becca B.