E is for Elephant: Themed Activities

Engagement and Expression- Just a reminder that our goal is to have children engaged in life...actively participating in play, in a growth mindset, in friendships, in learning and in building literacy skills too.  We want to help children to express themselves through all forms of communication be it words, writings, hand gestures, facial expressions, even cries.  We also want to encourage expression through song, dance, physical movement, drama, music and art.  Our goal is that they are able to express who they are as individuals with clarity and confidence and to be active participants in the world around them.

Listening Skills-  Here I am just going to list some great elephant based books to listen to.  Horton Hears a Who (Suess),  Elephants Cannot Dance (Willem), Elmer (David), Are you there little elephant? (Taplin), Elephants (Hurt), Babar (de Brunhoff).  A book that is also a song is One Elephant went out to Play (Rescek), Children can  also sing The Elephant Song (Herman), Jungle Book's Colonel Hathi Elephant March, Down by the Jungle and The Elephant Dance Song

Energy Busters (gross motor exercises)  elefun game=try to catch the butterllies the    elephant shoots up using the nets or your hands.  Elephant bath time includes bubbles to be chased. Elephants use stomping feet to communicate seismically but usually go around on tiptoeing feet in spite of their size.  Try both! Like elephants, children can display a show of strength too, perhaps by pushing activities or lifting ones. Did you know an adult elephant can lift 300kg with its trunk?  

Phonics  Sing "Elephant's Exercise: A Phonics song for Kids"(JunyTony). Draw big E/little e.  Practice a list of words with the long E (ear, eagle, eel, meat, seat, feet) or  short e sound (elephant, egg, empire, bed, red, head).  Find all the combinations of letters that can be used to make the /e/ sound (ie, ee, ea, ei, e_e, ey, e) when reading a book.

Handwriting (fine motor skills)  Trace an elephant shape. Complete a colour by number of elephants. Complete a jungle animal or "E" word crossword puzzle.  I made up an 'E word' word search and will try to include it in the comments section.  Trace E's and e's. Make a list of E adjectives like those found in the E is for exclamations blog. Make up a page of fancy E artwork (eg. polkadots on an E, a stick like E, a puffy E etc.)

Art  There are numerous colouring pages with elaborate elephant designs for relaxing  colouring sessions.  Use a pop toob as a formable elephant trunk coming out through a paper plate elephant face that has been decorated with big elephant ears of paper and drawings of eyes plus other decor.  It can have cut-out eyes instead to make it into an animal mask once you add ribbon or elastic to keep it on. Create your own Elmer the patchwork elephant with tissue paper, glue and an elephant cut from cardstock.

Nature/Science:  Create fun facts cards about elephants and other jungle animals.  Look at a map of the world to locate which places elephants live in nature.  Find out what kind of food they eat and how much they eat in a day.  Even the size of their poop is an interesting detail. They produce 100-150kg of it every day!  It can be used for animal homes, paper making, medication and even for drinks! 

Thinking Skills   These include memory skills as an elephant never forgets!  Make up your own memory matching game with key words or jungle animals or /E/ words. Place items on a tray, look for one minute then cover the tray and try to recall what is there. Match mama animals to their babies or animals to their colour (grey/elephants) or animals to their prints.  Sort out animals by size (big vs small) or habitat (jungle vs farm).

Sensory Activities  There is a song called Down in the Jungle where an elephant is found washing his clothes.  Sing it while washing hands/clothes/toy animals in a bin of  soapy water.  Discover different textures such as wrinkly like an elephant's skin or bristly like the end of it's tail or hard and smooth like it's tusks. Play with a twirling sound hose/pop toob and enjoy the sounds it makes.

Using the word ELEPHANTS, I have created a list of ideas related to elephants to help with play ideas that also help to build skills in reading, writing, listening and speaking.  ENJOY!