Shape a coiled snake to hold your crayons!

Craft a Coil Snake.

       This simple sculpture would be a good "warm up" project prior to crafting a more complicated lesson like a coil pot. 

       Young children can learn how to roll basic coils with the palms of their hands. Give them a mat, newspaper, or an old piece of cardboard to roll out the clay for this cute little assignment. Let them play with the coils for a while and encourage them to repeat the process over and over before finally finishing the snake pencil holder. They may need to wet their hands while working with the clay to prevent their coil from cracking and drying out.

       Their snake coil should be about 3/4 inch thick at it's widest point. Children may also score the surfaces to add texture or print. Make sure that one of the snake's ends is rounded and fat enough for a head and that the other end tapers off gradually. It doesn't really matter where the head or tail ends up in the end. Each one of these little reptiles is adorable when children are allowed to give them unique knots and twists.

Supply List:

• newspaper
• acrylic or watercolor paints
• red embroidery floss
• white glue
• air dry clay or paper clay
• small paint brush
• acrylic varnish 
• printing or scoring tools like a plastic fork
• shallow dish with water

Step-by-Step Directions:

1. Roll out a very long coil of clay.
2. Lift and form the coil into a tall container.
3. Leave enough space between the simple stacked coil for pencils, crayons, markers etc...
4. Poke a small hole with the tip of a pencil where the mouth of the snake should be.
5. Let the snake dry overnight or longer.
6. Paint the snake with a strip, spots, or any other patterns you like.
7. Glue a long strand of red embroidery floss coming from the snake's mouth, (hole) to mimic it's tongue.
8. Give your snake eyes with the tip of your paint brush too.
9. Seal the snake with a thin coat of clear varnish.

The shape of a coil snake pencil holder.

A friendly snake clutches a child's crayons.

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!