We first read a couple Bible stories that talked about snakes. The first one found in Genesis 3 talked about Adam and Eve's fall into sin as a result of the serpent's deception. This passage also went along with Madison's new Awana verse: "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." (Romans 3:23) so we have been working on memorizing that verse.
The other passage we read came from Numbers 21, which told of the Israelites being bitten by poisonous snakes in the desert. After Moses prayed to the Lord on their behalf, he was told by God to make a bronze snake and put it on a pole. When the people were bitten by the snakes they could look at the snake and live. We talked about how this story was referenced later in John 3:14, symbolizing Christ being lifted up.
I found a number of books on snakes at our library and the kids really enjoyed reading and learning about them.
"Amazing Reptiles and Amphibians" by Brian Williams"Reptiles" by Sue Malyan
"Snakes: Long, Longer, Longest" by Jerry Pallotta (I especially liked this one because it brought in comparison concepts as well as various types of measurements.)
"Snakes" by Gail Gibbons"The Life Cycle of a Snake" by John Crossingham
"Snakes and Other Reptiles" by Deborah M. Alexander
"I Need a Snake" by Lynne Jonell"Miles and Miles of Reptiles" by Tish Rabe (This was a fun, Cat in the Hat book with rhymes that told about various types of reptiles)
In the book mentioned above, "I Need a Snake", the little boy in the story creatively comes up with various household items to be his pet snakes. After we read the book, I had the kids look around and see what they thought would make good snakes. This picture is all the things they came up with.
Snake themed dot to dot(http://www.coloring.ws/t.asp?b=m&t=http://www.coloring.ws/ctd/connectsnake.gif)
Snake Bingo Dauber page
(http://www.dltk-kids.com/t.asp?b=m&t=http://www.dltk-kids.com/animals/image/bdauber-snake1.gif)
I decided to have Madison try a little creative writing activity. I found a picture online and she had to look at it and come up with a story about it. I think her story said something like"Once upon a time there was a girl and a snake. The snake is tired and the girl was sad."
There was some resistance from Madison to write a story because she was so concerned with wanting to spell everything exactly right. But I wanted her to just write like she thought the words sounded. After much prodding (and I'll admit, even a few tears) I managed to get this much out of her. I want her to have more practice in writing, so I think I'm going to try more of these types of assignments in the future. Hopefully my little perfectionist will become more comfortable with the idea the more she does it.
We made these spiral snakes. We glued the templates to some tag board to give them a little more strength.(http://www.dltk-kids.com/animals/mspiralsnake.htm)
After they are cut out, they are all nice and spiral-y.