Reptiles: Book and Bookmark Craft

My son’s teacher is sending home books that are long enough for him to read sections of each night (yahoo!). Bookmarks are a must now. Funny thing, though, they keep disappearing!

I came up with a fun way to learn about reptiles and make some scaly long-tongued bookmarks too. To learn about cold-blooded creatures, we read Miles and Miles of Reptiles by Tish Rabe. Have I ever mentioned how much I love the books in The Cat in the Hat Learning Library? They combine information about non-fiction topics with lively cartoon-like characters and rhyming text (I have a weakness for books that rhyme). My son LOVES these and I do too.

After we finished reading, I gave him some lizard and snake templates I made and cut apart. 

Download this 1-page PDF here.

Then I cut apart a shower poof and placed a piece of 7 ¼-inch wide cardboard inside the netting tube I cut. My son picked the colors of acrylic paint to use on each snake.

We placed the paper under the netting and over the cardboard. I taught my son to stencil, pouncing the brush until it was mostly dry and then pouncing again over netting. The netting created the perfect “stencil” to make scaly snake skin! Next, my son painted his lizards – one with spots, the other with stripes.

I used a hairdryer to speed up the dry time. Once dry, he added eyes with a black crayola marker. After I’d cut them out, we took them to the store to be laminated.

Once laminated, I cut around each bookmark, used a punch to add a hole in the mouth of each animal and my son threaded pink or red ribbon through for a tongue.

Of course, I added his name to the backs of each in the hope that his new super cool cold-blooded long-tongued bookmarks never slither away.