TiNY CLUB: Accordion Snakes
It’sssss time for another TiNY Club Monday! Today’s activity is a friendly snake craft based on the snake in Cori Doerrfeld’s The Rabbit Listened, our TiNY Club book of the month.
Materials:
Paper
Markers, crayons, or colored pencils
Tape or glue
Scissors
Optional: googly eyes
Instructions:
1. First, use your scissors to cut a two-inch-wide strip of paper. If you are using a rectangular sheet of paper, cut it down the long side so that your strip is nice and long. This is going to be your snake, so you can use your markers, crayons, or pencils to color it in or decorate it with scales.
2. Next, accordion fold your paper strip. That means to take a little bit of your strip and fold it in one direction, then take that and fold it in the opposite direction. Continue folding until your entire strip is folded that way, then release it.
3. Now that you have your snake body, it’s time to add a tongue. Using your leftover paper, cut out a tiny rectangle. Tape or glue the rectangle to the bottom of one end of your snake body. Now your snake has a tongue! You can even use your scissors to make the tongue forked, just like a real snake’s tongue.
4. Last but not least, it’s time to add eyes. Use your drawing supplies to draw some snake eyes onto your paper, or add googly eyes.
Ta-da! You have a snake.
Let’s talk a little bit about your snake’s tongue. See how it’s sticking out? Guess what! The snake isn’t trying to eat you – it’s trying to smell you! Snakes have a very special organ called a Jacobson’s organ. When snakes stick out their tongues, they collect particles from the air. When they bring their tongues back inside, their Jacobson’s organ translates those particles into smells! Pretty cool, right?