A Snail, A Snail, The Teacher Turns Pale…

Monday, 08 December 2014

Unlike many gardeners (and teachers), I LOVE snails. I love finding them in the garden, I love drawing them and I love reading about them in my favourite book The Snail and the Whale. In this blog I tell you a few facts about the banded snail, how to make your very own Snail Race as well as a lovely paper plate snail.

Head out and do some snail hunting at dusk

Banded Snail Facts

There are 2 common banded shell snails in the UK – one is brown-lipped and one is white-lipped. The colours refer to their shell openings though, not their actual lips!
Snails hide during the day in damp places and come out in wet weather or at night.
Banded snails hibernate in the winter.
Banded snails have two pairs of tentacles on their head which can be retracted. The longer, upper pair have the snail’s eyes at the very end of them!

Earlier in the year I reviewed the very wonderful 101 Things for Kids To Do Outdoors Book. If you haven’t already got it I would def recommend it for your Santa list. One of the projects in the book is the Snail Race. I decided to challenge M&D to a snail race. Here’s how…

Snail Race

You will need:

Snails
Chalk

How to do a race:

1. Draw your race track on some slabs using chalk.

2. Find some snails to race (I recommend having a good root around your hostas, a favourite of the snail!)

3. Get all the contestants to place their snail on the starting line and ready, steady, go!

4. The first snail over the finishing line is the winner!

We have plenty of snails which we can race!

Mummy’s snail managed to somehow win our snail race! I demand a re-run (or should that be a re-slither?!) If you are a bit squeamish when it comes to snails then you can make your own snail out of a paper plate from our blog Save the Snail.

Make A Paper Plate Snail

There you go. A lovely paper plate snail so if you are a snail fan like me you can enjoy looking at them all year round, even when they are hibernating!

Lulu xx