This Week at Mommy and Me: Purple Elephants

I was so excited to find this book to go along with our two week purple elephant project! I work at the library, so I get really excited when I find a great book I've never seen or heard of. I also love it when I get a question no one has ever asked before, so never be afraid to ask questions at the library!! The book is a super simple, rhyming, color book with elephants. Soooooo perfect for toddlers. Those of you who work with toddlers know how challenging it can be to find developmentally appropriate read-alouds for them.

We took two weeks to make the toilet paper tube elephant. The first week, we used purple dot stampers to decorate lavender paper. Some kids love dot stampers so much, they will gleefully cover the page. Other kids need some motivation. I encouraged parents to draw lines and have their child stamp on the line (great for developing visual tracking skills), or draw shapes and have their child "put a dot in the triangle", etc.

Before the next class, I cut out the ear shape and a rectangle to cover the body. They covered the tp tube, glued the ears to the back, punched a hole for the nose, and added two hole reinforcements for eyes. The chenille stem just gets inserted into the hole with a bend at the end to keep it in. I love that the trunk can swing back and forth.

 

Of course we did the Elephants on a Spider Web song with flannelboard pieces (enough for everyone). We do a song card every other week, so we did the same song. The elephant is an adorable finger puppet from Enchanted Learning. I precut the finger hole in the puppet and song card with a utility knife. They collect their song cards on a binder ring, so hopefully they are using them at home.

Have a great week!