Paper Snake Mosaics

Above, setting up for the snake mosaic art project. Right, teachers sample.

Student work in progress, this assignment took quite a while.

      So what is sooooo Irish about snakes? Well, St. Patrick drove them out of Ireland. The snakes driven from Ireland were not like the snakes we worked with and on during this assignment however.

      As you may guess from the photo, I used a paper shredder for this assignment. The students then cut their own little "paper tiles" from the strips of construction paper as they glued them down to the surface of their pictures. The children drew their snakes with yellow and white crayons first on the dark construction paper before beginning to fill them in with paper mosaic tiles. 

      Below are a few snapshots of the "snake man" who came to share these slithery beasts with our kids. I just had to take a few photographs of the children holding the large banana colored python. Their expressions and yelps were unforgettable, well, at least those coming from the surviving students.

      Our students were very brave as you can imagine.
I kept my distance from this little demonstration. Snakes give me the creeps!

Nesbitt Smith delle Celtic Woman in una fantastica esibizione. I use St. Patrick's Day projects as an opportunity to integrate studies in Irish culture. Here is a wonderful video demonstrating Irish folk music!