Recycled Crafts: Easy Snake craft

How about cute snake crafts for kids? Have you seen those fruit trays/liners at grocery stores? The ones that house apples, pears etc? When you flip these over, you can see a perfect snake outline! Great for fun snake crafts for kids. How cool! Well at least that’s what I thought when I saw a bunch of the fruit trays lying in a corner at the grocery store. Since my children are big wildlife enthusiasts all animal activities and animal crafts go over VERY well. So do recycled crafts.

Materials { affiliate Amazon links for your reference}

• Cardboard fruit trays
• Acrylic Paint
• Googly Eyes (The sticky ones are even more convenient)
• Red Construction Paper
• Fine Glitter(optional….who am I kidding? Never optional here)
• Acrylic Paint Brush Set

The fruit trays we used are the ones grocery stores use to stack their apples. The stores usually throw them or recycle them away and it was easy to ask them for a few trays. They were more than happy to part with them. All we did was flip them over and you can easily see the snake pattern right away ha!

I cut across the fruit tray to create 4 outlines for the snakes. They don’t look like snakes yet.. But wait.

With the cutouts and acrylic paint set out, the kids were in painting heaven! { All our art activities can be accessed here} Along with my 5 year we looked at a few picture of some gorgeous looking ( really!) snakes. She gathered that some snakes have bands and many of then have a skin pattern. She chose a pattern for herself and started painting. { Have you seen our patterns in nature post?}

For this art activity we only used thick stubby brushes like these since there weren’t any part that needed a fine paint brush. Thick toddler brushes like these work well too.

My 3 year old just goes with the flow! She mixed a few blues and greens and created this beautiful, sleek looking snake. Isn’t this a fun snake craft for kids? Once the snakes were dry ( haha) we added googly eyes and a forked tongue. { Which started a set of questions – why is a snake’s tongue cut? Are there any pink snakes? etc- see how a simple craft kicks off learning and researching time}

Mommy and 5 year old’s effort.

Can’t get enough of these wacky snakes!

Every other section of the fruit tray looks like a perfect snake outline including the head. The others (like pictured below) have a rounded head though. Honestly it doesn’t matter. The kids will enjoy painting all the “snakes” alike. We added the glitter and I even set out sequins and other acrylic jewelry in the hopes that my kids will enjoy “glaming up” their snakes.

However all I got was a sassy response from the 5 year old ” Mom, snakes don’t have sequins and jewels on their bodies” Sure kid, just glitter, right?

More crafts using recycled materials here

For more recycled crafts visit our Pinterest Board

Stick around and take a look at all the books we have co authored. Many different kids activities idea all neatly packaged in one spot with a handy supply list.