Elmer the Elephant

On a lighter note for a change, here's a fun project we did a few weeks ago.  Since Julia has been sick we haven't done too many lessons as a group.  I wanted something fun and simple to start with. As I was sorting all our children's books (more about that later) I came across Elmer by David McKee.

It's a cute story about a patchwork elephant who is obviously different from all the others.  It celebrates individuality and appreciating the differences in everyone, as well as the importance of laughter.  I thought it would be fun to read the book and make our own patchwork elephants.  As a I started to draw one, I thought this is silly, just Google it.  Ta-Da! Instant Elmer outlines, worksheets, and activities galore.

The first day we read Elmer and made patchwork elephants.  I printed the outline on cardstock.  Then I gave them strips of assorted color paper to cut into small squares.  Then they glued the squares and one 'googly eye' onto their Elmers.  I cut out the elephants once they were dry.

The next day, we read Elmer Again, Elmer and the Lost Teddy, and watched the Elmer book on a youtube clip.  We talked about whether this was a real story or pretend.  We discussed reality and fantasy in literature.  Then we read a simple nonfiction book about elephants.  Then I did KWL chart with them about elephants on our whiteboard.  This is a type of graphic organizer used often in primary grades.  There are three columns: Know, Want to know, and Learned.  We used this as we read several more children's nonfiction elephant books during the week.

We decided to use our Elmers we made to do a project I adapted from a website.  I had them each paint an 11x14 canvas with blue acrylic paint.  (Any color is fine.)  I love to use canvas because they are light, cheap, and easy to hang.  I just hand them right on a nail, no picture hangers needed.  It's easy to switch out projects if desired.  Then they each painted a sheet of paper green.  We used rollers for fun, but stampers, paintbrushes, or fingerpaints are fine, too.  Then next day we tore the green paper to make vines, leaves and grass.  Then we modge-pogdged them to the canvas.  I love this stuff.  It's like clear, washable, shellac glue that can be used on anything- paper, photographs, stickers, wood, you name it.  Then we attached their Elmers.

They came out so cute.  The kids were very proud of their masterpieces!

   

There are lots of other great ideas out there.  The internet is such a blessing to homeschoolers.  You can do cute songs like Do Your Ears Hang Low and Baby Elephant Walk.  Just have fun.  It doesn't have to be hard.  If your kids have a favorite storybook, expand on it.  It doesn't have to be fancy or complicated.  Just have fun learning :)

Now back to the books.  We are all booklovers in this family, always have been and always will be.  We come from a long line of them.  We use the library often and check out 50-100 at a time, but we have a lot in our home, too.  With books comes the need for efficient storage.  My little bookshelves and neat stacks on the floor weren't cutting it.  I was frustrated when we would be studying something during school and I couldn't put the hands on the book I wanted without a long search.  Then came IKEAs Expedit system...

  ...25 beautiful squares just begging to be filled :)  So now all the children's and reference books in our house our organized by topic into neat little cubbies.

AND there's room to grow (very important when organizing).  There is even room to keep the photo albums at the bottom and I'm getting baskets for some of the lower cubes to store the board books.  It is working beautifully.  It's great to be able to find what we need, but also to be able to show the kids how they can browse by topic when they want to look at something (or find an answer to a question).  Carter was frustrated with me that I wouldn't alphabetize them.  The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, but I think this will be good enough :)