Tall Tales 2014- Elmer the Elephant

Today's book was Elmer by David McKee. 

After reading the book to the children, we started our 3 projects.

One project was a sponge painted Elmer. The students traced a large elephant shape onto a piece of white paper. They used square sponges dipped in paint to paint their elephant. For the sponges, I bought Miracle Sponges from School Specialty. They come in a pack of thin sponges that are easy to cut into whatever shape you want (in this case, small squares). Once they are dipped in water, they expand to their full size.

The second project was an elephant sculpture made out of air dry clay. The student made their sculpture and then placed them onto a piece of cardboard for transport (the parents brought cereal boxes that were cut into manageable sizes). The children painted the elephants with tempera paint. 

The last project of the day was an elephant made out of a milk jug. The jugs were cut in half and we used the part with the handle (this acted as the trunk). The children covered the jugs with tissue paper and watered down glue. They added googly eyes and ears (made out of foam sheets) and then decorated them with yarn, beads, and any other materials they could get their hands on.

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Kindergarten Warm/Cool Elmer the Elephant

This is a new project that I did this year with my kindergarteners. I read Elmer by David McKee.
If you haven't read this book, it's a great book to read to your students to talk about being different. After we read the book, I showed them how to use basic shapes to draw their own Elmer. It was like we were doing a magic trick- the ooh's and aah's made my day! Their Elmer's turned out adorable. Then I showed them how to use a tool that the big kids use- a ruler! They used the ruler to draw straight lines on Elmer going side to side and up and down. I made sure to show them how to hold the ruler so that it wouldn't slide on them.

After they had drawn Elmer, we worked on adding some details to our picture to create a landscape: we added the ground, so that Elmer wasn't flying in the air, a tree to show that he was in the jungle, some clouds, the sun, birds, etc.

They traced their entire picture with a black marker.

They used crayons to color the entire background. We really had to talk about how the sky touches the ground. It doesn't stop up at the top of the paper.

When they were finished coloring their background, we learned about warm and cool colors. They got to choose whether they wanted Elmer to be warm or cool, but they could not use both (very difficult for a 5 year old!). They got to use oil pastels to color him in and they had to work really hard to color Elmer in so that it was dark- I kept telling them to press HARD! Pin It