Home School - 5 Simple Steps to make a Conker Snake

We are trying to cover as many crafts and activities at the moment to match our autumnal geography topic. 

When we took ourselves off on our autumn hunt and collected lots of different autumnal objects but at the same time we discussed the changing of season and the colour change that trees present with it.

One thing that stood out after our activity was that we had lots of left over autumnal objects! We decided then to make use of them in some craft!

I searched Pinterest and saw several ways to use conkers like this and all under a different name! So here is our 5 simple steps to how to make a conker snake/caterpillar/worm.

Materials

Conkers (15 per snake)

String/Shoelace

Wobbly eyes

Glue

Red paper

Screwdriver

1. Making holes

Using a positive end screwdriver make a hole through the conker. The boys found this easy to start but needed to help with the final push through.

2. Clearing the holes

Once you have counted out and made holes all the way through 15 conkers you will need to make sure that all of the holes are clear. The boys then pushed the screwdriver through both ends to clear any blockages to make the threading easier.

3. Threading the Conkers

We didn't have any spare shoelaces available so used some wool which we folded into 4..We tied a knot onto the end and made sure that it was big enough to stop the conkers from slipping off. Then using the screwdriver the boys put the four string hoop around the end and pushed it through.

This was a little tedious and I can only see that with a shoelace this might be easier especially if it has a plastic end.

Repeat this process for all 15!

4. Gluing on the Eyes

With the conkers firmly on the string it was time to glue on our wobbly eyes; I decided to use our glue gun for this. As the glue gun gets very hot I wouldn't let the boys use it but they did stick on the eyes.

5. Making the tongue

Cutting small triangles from red paper the boys then stuck the tongue with more glue to the face just below the eyes

Depending on what you are making you could use pipe cleaners for antennas on a caterpillar. You could also paint the conkers although I am not sure if they would need to be painted first or after; I would suggest using oil paints to do this though!

So what do you think? Would you give this a go?