In this post, you will see all of the snake activities we did and you get to download our snake printables, including 3 awesome activities!
Let me tell you what happened to us on Sunday: We were driving back home from town and my husband spotted a dead rattlesnake on the side of the road.
He pulled over and made sure it was dead.
I immediately suggested we take it home to dissect as a Science project.
And so we did! We took the rattlesnake home and that is how our unit studies on snakes began.
Unit Study with Hands-on Snake Printables
We have been doing one snake activity each day and it’s been so much fun and very educational.
In this post, you will see all of the snake activities we did and you get to download our snake printables, including 3 awesome activities!
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A Complete Snake Unit {Free Printables}
Here it is! We dissected the dead rattlesnake we found. It was so neat! We used online websites to see where all of its internal organs are located.
It was fascinating locating most of them! I know that some of the pictures are a bit gross, but I wanted to show you a few smaller ones so you can see how it went.
In the picture, you can see me holding the liver in my hand. In the bottom (middle) picture, you can see the intestines.
We found some fecal matter in them, and, as tough a stomach I have to dissect a rattlesnake, I felt that dissecting fecal matter was a bit much for this time around.
My husband helped me and he actually skinned it.
The Best Snake Books
Since the dissection got us all intrigued about these amazing reptiles, I gathered up all of the snake books we have at home and we read and read.
I’m pretty sure we dissected a Mohave Rattlesnake and we found information about it specifically in our book Reptiles (Pocket Books).
We simply took one day to read books on Snakes off and on to learn more facts about them.
Here is our list:
Snakes for Kids: A Junior Scientist’s Guide to Venom, Scales, and LifeSnakes for Kids: Amazing Facts & Pictures for Children on These AmazingNational Geographic Readers: Slither, Snake!
- What Hides in the Jungle?
- What Lurks in the Swamp?
- Reptiles (Pocket Books)
- The Reptiles
- Reptiles
- Secrets of the Rainforest
- Touch and Feel Wild Animals
- Snakes (Discovery)
- Snakes
- Deadly Animals
We also saw these FREE Kindle books on our iPad (read aloud and check for reading comprehension):
12 Australian Venomous Animals! Kids Book About Dangerous Creatures
Snakes & Spiders for Kids Bundle
Snakes! Learn About Snakes While Learning To Read
Snake Printable (3-Part Cards)
These snake printables are great! They will teach your kids not only about snakes in general, but go more in depth, pointing out the different parts of the body.
Parts of a Snake Activity {Free Printables}
Next, I made these 3-Part Cards on parts of the snake so my children could learn them easily. I placed arrows on the exact thing we are talking about, unless it is obvious.
I included eggs in the cards because, at some point, they are a part of the (female) snake and it was important for my children to know that snakes are oviparous animals.
You can download these cards for free in this post. They are in color. They are bright and beautiful.
You can print out two sets to create 3-part cards like Montessori uses or you can print one set to use them to label the pictures.
It was fun learning facts about snakes!
Be sure to print them out in color, cut them and laminate them for durability.
This set includes: rattle, scales, eggs, mouth, eye, fangs, head, jaw, neck, nostrils, underbelly, skeleton, skin, tongue and body.
We also discussed snake habitats and played around with our miniature desert animal replicas.
Different snakes live in different habitats and they adapt to where they live. Some live by the water, some live in the desert and others live in the forest.
Yet others, like the rainforest and other snakes like to live in urban areas (gardens) and even the tundra.
It was fascinating to find out that we can find snakes in pretty much every habitat, except probably polar habitat.
Snakes Worksheets Printable Set
Here is the other printable that is included in the set with the 3-part cards that we did. They are coloring pages for kids to color as they learn.
We learned that snakes can be many different colors, not just the typical black and brown.
I wanted to create a printable that would teach them this, but at the same time, help them with handwriting, penmanship and reading.
Free Printable Snake Worksheets
And last, but not least, I made a set of coloring pages for them to recognize and color. These pages are all black and white.
You can print one snake per page or you can do it like me and print 2 per page (you can set it up in your printer settings).
I felt that 2 per page worked out great to use colored pencils and markers, but for paint, I would definitely print one per page.
Free Snake Printables: Coloring Pages
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Erin says
Oh thank you.? My son is obsessed with snakes! We just checked out all the snake books our library had!
Vanessa says
Thank you for featuring our snake unit! 🙂 This post is fabulous and I love the free printables! That rattlesnake was HUGE!
Meeghan says
Eek! Snakes!
Tiffany says
This is awesome! You did a great job. I can’t find the link to download these & would love to use them.
Jon says
Hello, quick note concerning snakes and their eggs. Some snakes do lay eggs, while others give live birth. All snakes in family boidae, for example are live bearers, and as such the babies are referred to as neophytes. Conversely, all snakes in family pythonidae lay eggs. Family colibridae are a bit of a mixed bag, and therefore have members that are both oviparous (egg laying), and ovoviviparous (live bearing). All of this to say, rattlesnakes, being members of family viperidae, are live bearers, and as such, never produce external eggs. So, for rattle snakes, the eggs are always a part of the female.