Recycled CD Snail Craft for Kids - The Kindergarten Connection

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Spring brings sunshine, blooming flowers, freshly planted gardens, and lots of critters. Many animals have made a reappearance including bugs, worms, and snails. Gardeners won’t think too highly of snails in the coming months, but many kids find them fun and fascinating from their slimy body to their hard shell. Turn their fascination into a fun snail craft with simple supplies you likely already have on hand!

This snail craft is a great way to introduce a little learning. Kids are intrigued to learn that the snail carries his home on his back. We talked about what it would be like if we had to carry our homes on our backs.

Your kids might also recall Turbo as they are making this snail craft. As I was laying out this craft, Turbo was the first thing that my kindergartner mentioned. He wanted to make sure his had blue and yellow for Turbo.

Supplies:

Recycled CD or DVD
Construction Paper (various colors)
Googly Eyes
Scissors
Glue

Making the Snail Craft

Directions:

1. Start off by having kids prep the items needed for this snail craft if you are able and time allows. This step gives kids scissor practice to work on fine motor skills. Cut the construction paper into small square or rectangle pieces. Next, choose a color for the snail’s body and cut out a body. Cut 2 tentacles from black construction paper.

2. Glue small pieces to the CD/DVD. We started off doing coils, but the kids ended up just gluing the pieces onto the CD/DVD to make the shell.

3. Glue the snail’s body to the back of the CD/DVD so that the head peaks out.

4. Glue a googly eye to the face of the snail and 2 tentacles cut from black construction paper. Typically the eyes are on the tentacles, but for the purpose of this craft we glued the eye on the body.

Other Ways to Make a Snail Craft:

We strive to make crafts fun, simple, and easy so that they can be easily replicated using items you have on hand. If you don’t have old CDs and DVDs laying around, you could use a paper plate or piece of recycled fiberboard for the shell. You could also use a marker to draw the eye or use pipe cleaners for the tentacles.

Extend the Activity:

Discuss the textures of a snail. Ask kids if they have ever seen a snail before. Did they touch it? How did it feel? Was it slimy? How did the shell feel? Was it hard? You could offer something slimy and something hard like a shell that allows kids to experience the textures of a snail.
Make a snail snack with celery and peanut butter as the body and an apple slice as the shell. Add raisins for the eyes and pretzel sticks for the tentacles.
Read books about snails: Some fun ones are Are you a Snail? or The Snail Who Forgot the Mail.