Neighborhood Snakes

A 5 day curriculum introducing the Snakes of the San Francisco Bay Area

As urban development progresses in the Bay Area, encounters with California’s wildlife are increasingly common, especially with snakes living in our neighborhoods. Unfortunately, snakes are one of the most misunderstood groups of animals, and many harmless snakes are killed due to lack of education and understanding.

Neighborhood Snakes is a one of a kind, science education program that teaches our youth the importance of local habitats and the snakes who live there. Each program has been fit to grade level in content and standards to maximize learning and student engagement, not as passive learners, but as future agents of change for our community. Our educators introduce science concepts that are foundational to future STEAM careers and align with NGSS and Common Core standards.

Day One: What is a Snake?

Learn what makes a snake a snake in our 3 minute video.

Print out 2 vocabulary worksheets for students to review and color after the video.

Day Two: Meet Your Neighbors

Build A Snake (Tk-1st grade)

Let’s Draw a Garter Snake

This hands-on activity is part of our Neighborhood Snake curriculum and designed to teach basic external snake anatomy. It also reinforces understanding of a snake's basic needs including food, water, and access to an external heat source and shade for temperature regulation. Students will draw and color a garter snake in its habitat along with the Things That Creep educator in the video.

Materials needed:

1) Paper

2) Pencil

3) Eraser, Coloring Supplies Pace: This video has been edited down to under 10 minutes. The activity will likely take longe

Let’s Build A Tiny Shelter (3rd grade)