Elmer the Elephant and Rainbow Fish at Preschool

I am part of a little cooperative that teaches preschool for our 3 year old children. I only end up teaching preschool once a month, which I figure is definitely worth the money I save by not sending Eli to a "formal" preschool. I figure that with two college degrees, I am probably qualified to teach preschool anyway, right?

A week or so ago when I taught preschool, the letter for the day was E. So I decided that we would do something related to elephants. My mother-in-law (who is also a librarian) suggested that we read about Elmer the Elephant.

So I checked out the books at the library where I work. Can I just say that these books are awesome! Elmer is a patchwork elephant that wants to be like the other elephants, but comes to find out that they like him just the way he is. Jonah and Eli loved reading these books so I knew they would be a big hit at preschool. Here was the setup for the day:

I made the elephants using egg cartons. I found the idea on this website and they weren't hard to make at all. I thought they turned out really cute!



First I read the first few Elmer books, then we put long socks over our arms and pretended they were trunks. I had the kids reach into a sack and pick something. Then they were supposed to try to tell me what it was without looking. The kids thought it was tons of fun and wanted to do it again later!


I wish I had pictures of the kids with their elephant trunks, but sometimes when you are in charge of 5 three-year-olds it can be pretty busy. I did manage one picture of them doing their E coloring page.

After they colored their paper elephants, I let them color their egg carton elephants. Once a year Elmer's friends have a parade where all the elephants paint themselves and Elmer is the only elephant painted grey. The kids did a great job making their own colorful elephants.

It was a really fun preschool day for me. I was really happy with how the crafts and activities worked out. I really do enjoy teaching preschool a lot more when I am prepared!

 For our second day of preschool that week we had the letter F. So we talked about the rainbow fish and read tons of books about him.

I think the craft turned out pretty well. I used my new Silhouette Cameo to cut out the fish scales, so it was a lot easier on me than cutting out a bunch of stuff by hand. I can already tell I am going to love that machine! Then the kids just glued the scales on the fish outlines.

Here is Eli's rainbow fish. Pretty nice, huh?

 And of course you can't have preschool without a snack! What snack would go better with this lesson than rainbow colored goldfish?! Of course the kids loved them.

After looking at the crafts I did for preschool, I guess I must have needed a little more color in my life this winter!

Linked up to Wordful Wednesday, Wordish Wednesday, and Wordless Wednesdays all over