Spin Art Snails: Spring is on its way and, with it, it will bring lots of lovely new learning topics for pre-schoolers and school early years. Life cycles, mini-beasts – get ready to embrace all the hands-on fun of seasonal nature-based learning.
And we have the perfect activity to really bring it all to life. Our spin art snails bring fun, movement and real creativity, as children use paint and an old salad spinner to create totally unique shell designs.
This craft is perfect for little hands: they can use the pre-drawn snail template and they don’t have to worry about being careful or precise with decoration – in fact, the messier and more haphazard the better!
But it’s also a great activity for older kids, who can use the craft almost as a science experiment to explore the outcomes of playing with color, size and distribution of paint blobs and speed of spinning. You could even get them to make a chart with their findings!
Either way, the end result is a wonderfully bright and expressive piece of art that would make a beautiful display for any classroom or playroom wall.
Materials:
White and Colored Card Stock
Paint
Pencil
Scissors
Black Marker Pen
Salad Spinner
Make The Snail Shell
You can download our pre-drawn template from the members area, or you can draw your own.
If you’re really good at drawing circles, you could try freehand – or use something like a paint pallette or side plate to draw around. Just remember that the circle needs to fit inside your salad spinner.
Then carefully cut the shell out.
Add The Paint
Now for the fun part! Pop the shell shape inside the salad spinner, and squeeze in some drops of paint. Will you choose all the colors of the rainbow, or go for a theme, like shades of blue and purple?
Why not try experimenting with different sized blobs of paint as well, to see if they create a different effect?
Spin That Shell!
Then it’s time to spin! Grab the top of your salad spinner, and turn it around and around, letting the paint move inside. Ask a grown up for help holding the bowl if you need to!
Just as you played with the color of the paint and the size of the blobs, try experimenting with speed – do you get different effects if you spin slower or faster?
Draw the snail
Meanwhile, whilst your painted shell is drying, make the snail. Use the pre-drawn template from the members area, or have a go at drawing him yourself onto some brightly colored cardstock.
Remember, without their shell, a snail is just like a long slug with stalks for eyes and a little tail that turns upwards at the end.
Add Detail
Add eyes onto the stalks, and draw on a big friendly smile. You could stick on some rosy cheeks like we did, or even create the same effect with some little fuzzy pom poms.
Assemble The Snail
Finally, stick on the shell and – wow! That is definitely the brightest, boldest, most adorable snail I’ve ever seen!
We hope your Arty Crafty Kids enjoy making their very own Spin Art Snails!
Don’t forget to share your pictures and tag us on social media – seeing all your colorful snails is guaranteed to brighten my day!
