This very large purple snake is an animalito, a traditional Mexican craft. The idea is to take the strangest looking, most gnarled, most awkward looking stick you can find and then paint it so that it looks like an animal. Ideally, your stick will have little branches that can be used for legs. At worst, you can always make a snake as I did.

Materials:
Stick, twig, branch, part of a tree or bush
tempera paints
Small paint brushes

Time: About 45 minutes for the paint to dry

Method: Paint your stick (twig/branch) any way you choose in order to turn it into a fanciful animal. Realism has no place here.

TIPS FOR WORKING WITH CHILDREN
The children will like painting the stick so much that they will put on very thick layers of their base color. Try to help them moderate this impulse so that the original layer will be dry when they want to add their details.