Elephant Preschool Theme

My kids are so excited about the new Dumbo movie coming out next week.  I knew we did a fun elephant theme a long time ago and realized I haven't shared it on this blog.  So here are a few fun ideas from our old preschool blog.  Can you believe that cute little girl is now 13!  Time flies way to quickly.
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E is for Elephant

E elephant- Our variations of No Time for Flashcards E elephant. He is pretty cute.

Elephant puppet- (found here). We used him to sing our elephant songs found here
Simple Shape elephant- I cut out circles, rectangles, triangles, and ovals to make an elephant. We sorted the shapes and then counted them. We put our elephant together and glued him to a big sheet of paper. We wrote the number of shapes used to make the elephant on our paper. Later we used it to find the shapes on the elephant (an I spy type of game)

Number elephant- I used this week to introduce counting to 8. I printed off 8 elephants each had a number on it (1-8). We put the elephants in numerical order. Then I made 8 cards with dots on them (again 1-8). We matched the elephants number with the correct dot card. Third each number elephant was outlined with a different color. I made up cards with the different colors on them and we used them to match shapes. Quick and easy to make three different learning activities.
Funny story-As we were putting the elephants in numerical order Aubrey noticed the size of the first few elephants and called them "mommy, baby, and daddy" for the 4Th one she called it Kade (my brother). When we were matching the colors she noticed the "Kade elephant" was PINK she thought that was so funny and kept laughing.

Mixed black and white to make gray. We made hand print elephants (found here). I even let Aubrey paint my hand so I could make an elephant. She thought it was pretty cool. We used paper for the ear and black marker for the eye. She then colored her paper to make them a home.

We watched a few fun videos on You tube- One with baby elephants playing (found here). It is really cute and Aubrey enjoyed watching it. Also we this video of an elephant painting found here. It was fascinating to see. Its a little long so you might want to just watch some of it but we really enjoyed the entire clip. It inspired this activity-painting like the elephant. We discussed how hard it must be for the elephant to paint with his trunk. We tried to paint using only our mouths. It was really fun and the pictures turned out awesome. Scott was impressed when he saw our pictures. (Aubrey has really been into taking pictures lately-She took this one of me painting.)



We have been practicing the letters in her name and helping her recognize her name. I made these little cards to spell out her name. We used them to practice letters and also put them in the correct order. She played with them often.Aubrey also LOVES to write letters. She is getting pretty good at the letters-A,U, E, and Y. (we have really only done the letters in her name). Here is a picture of the letter Y she wrote all by herself. I was so proud of her. Now I need to figure out how to get her to write them in a line and not all over the page.E Word file folder- We used pictures we already had on the computer and a few pictures I quickly took. Our words included- elephants, eggs, elbow, Elsie, Ella, earmuffs, ear, elliptical, Erik, and eel. We also used this as an I spy game.Paper plate elephant- (Idea found on Casa Camacho) We mixed our paint again. We used a paper plate, and cardboard (from a cereal box) Aubrey painted everything and when it was done we glued the pieces together and added wiggly eyes.
We also made the Letter E out of Popsicle stick and colored the letter E and and elephant.
Next week we are doing a mini them due to vacation most of the week- We will be doing F for the Fourth of July. Instead of one big post at the end I will try and post our activities as we go in case anyone wants to do them before Saturday.