Painted Rock Snails

My three year old prefers activities that I make for him rather than doing crafts himself, so I try to not do too many crafts so that he still enjoys doing them on occasion. I thought he might enjoy this craft because it gives him complete freedom to make it however he wants. Turns out, I was right and he really enjoyed making these painted rock snails. I expected him to paint one rock and be done but he actually painted all of the rocks that I had gathered.

How We Made These Snails:

We began this craft by painting the rocks. I gave my son some paints on a paper plate and let him paint the rocks any way he wanted. His way of course was to mix all of the colors together. I love this craft because no matter how you paint it, it still turns out cute. We also used the Fun2 Play craft tray that I talk about all of the time. I talk about it so much because we use it a ton for our messier activities. After my son was done painting, I simply wiped it down with a wet paper towel and the mess was taken care of. 

After painting the rocks, we set them out to dry.

While the rocks were drying I cut the snail shape out of cardboard.

Next, I folded the snail shape in half. When I did this I noticed that the patterned side of the cardboard showed and I didn’t like the look of that so I cut out another snail shape and glued the two cardboard snails together with the brown side facing out on both. 

Finally, I hot glued the googly eyes onto the snail and used a black sharpie marker to create a mouth. 

My sons are having fun changing the rocks onto different cardboard snails. This could easily be turned into a learning activity by painting the rocks and snails different colors and having your child match the colors. 

What You Will Need: 

Cardboard, rocks, paint, paintbrush, googly eyes, hot glue gun, marker

Directions:

1. Have your child paint the rocks
2. Let rocks dry
3. Cut snail shapes out of cardboard (If you use something like a cereal box as your cardboard and you don’t want the patterned side to show, cut out two snail shapes for each snail and glue them together with the brown sides facing out).
4. Hot glue googly eyes onto the cardboard snail
5. Draw a mouth with a marker
6. Let your child place different rocks onto the snail to create multiple variations of the snails

Inspired by: noeli_17

Let us know if you make your own painted rock snails!

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