Here we are finding different Elmer books hidden in our class bookbox. We put them on the window sill so we could enjoy reading them with our friends. 

 

Our fine motor activities were again colour-themed - with some elephant tasks too! We wound wool around a tube in the order of the colours of the rainbow, used tweezers to place pompoms in rainbow order to create a fuzzy rainbow, threaded cotton reels onto a lace to make a colourful trunk for Elmer, and followed step-by-step instructions to draw an elephant.

We also created colourful patterns on Elmer outlines using tiny dot stickers. It took lots of time, patience and stickers! We had to be resilient to keep on going with this activity.

To create a patchwork line pattern on Elmer we learnt a new skill - using a ruler. We found that we had to hold the ruler down and keep it steady to make nice straight lines.

 

One of our creative tasks was to make a puffy Elmer. We carefully painted the squares on outlines of Elmer - one for the front and one for the back, trying to make sure that we used a different colour for squares that were next to each other. After these had been cut out, we helped to staple them together and scrunched up strips of newspaper to stuff him with so he became a 3d puffy Elmer!

 

Here are some herds of playdough elephants that we made. Some have patterns on their bodies or are decorated to celebrate Elmers Day when all the elephants decorate themselves in bright colours and patterns. We made some patchwork Elmers too!

 

We used the elephant-shaped cutters again for this next job, but luckily didn't use playdough to make our Elmer biscuits. We enjoyed sieving, mixing, rolling and decorating - but enjoyed the eating part most of all!

 

We used Unifix cubes and Megablocks to create colourful Elmers......

......and worked with our friends to complete Elmer floor puzzles. 

 

We had some challenging construction tasks - to create elephants from Sticklebricks and then Multilink cubes. We needed lots of patience and resilience to make sure our elephants had four legs, a head, a tail, a trunk and ears. We were so proud when we were finally finished! We then took our creations to a photo shoot on the small world area and took our own photos of them. 

 

Our final creative project was to make a milk bottle Elmer. First we covered the top half of a milk bottle and some cardboard ears with brightly coloured tissue paper and PVA glue. Once we had glued on the ears, added a wool tassel tail and stuck googly eyes on, our bottles were transformed into unique elephants - each with their own special character - just like the Antelopes! We took photos of them on our small world area and then lined them up on the window sill so they could look outside.

 

We used our phonic knowledge to read pattern words to create a pattern wordbank and label an elephant, then used these and the colour wordbank (that we had created for our Rainbow Fish work), to help us write a description of a patterned Elmer that we had created by tracing over patterns and lines on an Elmer outline, using felt tip pens.

We also chose our favourite Elmer creative project to write about.

 

In maths we were looking at the number 8 and used elephants to practise our counting by making herds of 8 elephants, 8 elephants in a 10s frame, and 8 colourful squares on an Elmer, arranging them in different ways to show ways of making 8 - 6 and 2 more, 4 and 4 more, 3 and 4 and 1, 2 and 2 and 2 and 2 and so on. 

We also made repeating patterns using 2 colours of elephants....

......and practised our part part whole work using elephants too. We started with a whole herd of elephants, then moved part of the herd to the grass and part of the herd to the water. We described what we had done using stem sentences: 3 and 3 are part of 6, 2 and 3 are part of 5 etc.

We knew that the whole herd still had the same total number as we had not added any ore or taken any away, we had just re-arranged the parts of the herd.

 

 

And finally that was the end of our Elmer topic. The end!