Clay, Coil Snails

Are you all ready for this?
Here's a cute  project you can do with your 1st graders. And the best part is... they're actually learning  a clay method!

Clay, coil snails! Paint! Pipe cleaners! And glitter! (We like glitter here. What can I say!) Your 1st graders can totally do this and will love it!

The kids  start out by making two clay coils. One short, one long. 
Teacher alert here! Keep reminding the kids to avoid making the coils with their fingers. Your fingers are bumpy, therefore, your coils will come out bumpy.  Encourage the kids to make the coils with the flat, palm of your hand.

One coil is then made into a spiral for the shell. The other is attached to to the bottom of the shell as the snail's body. They can make it into any curvy shape they like. Using a pencil tip, put a hole into one end of the body coil. This is where they will insert the pipe cleaners for the antennae later on.

After the clay dries you can start painting. I gave every kid a brush. Six tempera colors were chosen and set up at six different stations around the room. Out of those six colors, the kids could chose three  to work with. The kids would travel from station to station with their brush and snail.

Actually, no snails were broken as they traveled from station to station. Really!!!

Having the paint organized into stations  worked really well. It's makes everything much easier to handle. Believe me. You won't be sorry if you set your paint up that way. Especially, when you're a traveling art teacher.

After the paint has dried, pipe cleaners were thread through the hole that was made with the pencil tip earlier on. We then add glitter. I find that glue glitter works best, as it's easy to work with. The glitter was placed just on the shell.

Well... what do you think?  Would this clay project work in your art room? Let me know in the comments below.