Tis’ the season of gooey creatures.

Spring rains are heaven in the universe of snails, slugs and other varieties of slimy forest friends. We are personally working on attaining “groupie” status in terms of L-O-V-I-N-G banana slugs and our daughter’s newest discovery – the forest snail.

She totally digs beach snails. A day on the tidal flats around Comox Harbour or out at Pt. Holmes would seem incomplete without the examination, discovery and return to the water of at least a billion snails (and you think I’m overstating it:)).

But, when we were out at the Lazo Marsh recently searching for some elusive orchids and discovered a snail in the forest her “Snails…live…in the FOREST TOO!” realization was enough to wake even the latest hibernator from its den. We ended up discovering more than one, and a few snail shells too…and it’s been all-snails, all the time ever since.

So, when I discovered a snail-making craft in Arty Facts – Insects, Bugs & Art Activities, we were all over this project that wrapped together three faves – baking, painting and creatures.

I loved this project because it was really tactile, forced the tiny person to have some patience (baking and cooling) and stretched the crafting process into several hours in little spurts which, on occasion, is very, very useful. We did the baking part of this and then made lunch, painted and then went and ran around outside, glued afterward and by late afternoon had snails in our flowers, breaking up the day nicely.

So, here’s what you need:

- 2 cups of White Flour (makes four medium snails)
- 1/4 cup of warm water (add more as you go to gain the proper consistency)
- About a 1/4 cup of vegetable oil (again, add a bit more as you go)
- Flat cookie sheet
- Tempera paints
- Paint Brushes
- Glitter
- Google eye
- Craft glue
- We also added pompoms and pipe cleaners for the antennae. So, if you want to do that, get some little ones.

Directions:

1. Pre-heat your oven to 375 degrees. In a bowl, mix flour, water and oil until you get a nice consistency that’s not too sticky. The book never gave us measurements (read: frustrating). So, it was a bit of an experiment for us. It says to put the dough in the refrigerator for half an hour, which I’m sure is helpful, but we didn’t do it (try to keep dough from a nearly 3-year-old, ha!). They were a little more likely to break apart. But, that’s the trade off.

2. Divide the dough up into four balls. Throw a little flour on a cutting board or the counter and roll the balls out into long snake-like tubes.

3. Get spiraling…then bake for 30 minutes and let cool for about the same amount of time.

4. After they are totally cool, painting and glittering can begin. The book gets all fancy with designs. But, I always find that when I try to stick to the fancy, the creative preschooler reminds me with paint throwing and other moments that make me want to pull my hair out that if I just let her do her thing, she makes cool stuff and no one gets a paintbrush in the face:

5. After the paint is dry, glue the google eye and other decorations on. Let dry thoroughly and, voila, snails.

NOTE: Putting them outside without a varnish isn’t a good choice if you want the snails to stick around. These guys are inside pets except for on sunny days.