Snails are mollusks, and they are very different from most of the animals we’ve written about here at FreshPlans. For one thing, you can easily bring snails into your classroom.
Get some live snails to observe.
Snail food will keep your snails in the pink. Create a terrarium for your snails.
A little less fancy, but still fun:
How Stuff Works has some snail activities to try out with your classroom pet snails.
You can also get escargots — snails for eating.
English
Is it surprising that we call them snails when they’re alive but escargot on a plate? It really shouldn’t be. Look art this group of words:
- pig in English, porc in French– like “pork”
- cow in English, boeuf in French– like “beef”
- sheep in English, mouton in French– like “mutton”
There are more word pairs like this, but you will have noticed that they are English words when they’re alive, and yet they are words that began as French the they hit the plate.
At one time, farmers in England generally spoke English, but the upper classes often spoke French. The people who knew the animals in their living forms spoke English, but the people who mostly only knew animals on the plate spoke French. The food-related words from French became part of the English language.
There are lots of picture books about snails.
One of our favorites is Escargot.
This charming book is in the form of a conversations between the reader and a snail. It breaks this snail’s heart that snails are not anyone’s favorite animal.
Maybe you’ll change your mind by the end of the book.
Tiger Days is a book about feelings, sharing the different animals people might feel like on any day.
“On snail days I go slowly in everything I do,
and I might take a little while, when I’m a snail that’s just my style…
But I’m still me, I’m always me, no matter how I seem.
And there are just so many ways that I can be on different days”
This book has an unusual rhyme scheme. Ask older students to find it.
More snail books:
Scholastic has a lesson to go with The Biggest House in the World. It includes an idea for Snail Olympics. Pets in the classroom has one, too.
