Thursday, July 7, 2022

Preschool Picture Books & Art: Swirl by Swirl and Spiral Snail Craft

This is one of my favorite picture books because the illustrations are absolutely stunning. It's a great introduction to spirals for preschoolers as well as a wonderful nature study book. All of the spirals in the book are from nature! I also love paper plate crafts (as you may be able to tell!). We did this snail in two different ways.

Swirl by Swirl by Joyce Sidman

First, I showed Zeke how to draw a spiral on a paper plate (the snail's shell) using a white crayon. He drew one on his plate. Make sure to press down hard with the crayon - Zeke didn't press down hard enough so his wound up not showing through.


Next, I thinned out some washable paint with water. I used this egg carton because it was the perfect size. Zeke painted both paper plates. The spiral showed through the paint really well on my plate because I pressed down hard with the white crayon. It wasn't very visible on Zeke's plate because he didn't press down very hard.



I cut out two snail's bodies and glued them to the back of the paper plate. Zeke added these jumbo googly eyes (which I think are so much fun!). I twisted the ends of a pipe cleaner into a spiral and taped that to the back of the snail's head.


On the snail where the spiral didn't show up, I drew a spiral outline of glue and Zeke helped me to place the twine on the glue spiral. This snail also turned out really cute! 


Have you read this book? There are so many fun spiral activities that we could "spin" off of this book!


Check out the other posts in this series:

Birds and Feather Painting

A Tree is Nice and Cork Tree Painting

The Mixed-Up Chameleon and Paper Plate Color Changing Chameleon

The Fuzzy Duckling and Handprint Duck

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