Elmer

Earlier this year I discovered the website twinkl which I highly recommend. It has loads of resources for all age groups, some of which are free. I ordered the one-year subscription which gives access to all the site's resources and it's been more than worth it. One of the treasures I uncovered on twinkl is the picture book series Elmer by author David McKee. I can't believe I'd never heard of it before!

Elmer is an adorable patchwork elephant with an absolute heart of gold. Over the course of a week, E, R and I went through three Elmer books (starting with the first in the series... there's no particular order after that). Twinkl has tons of Elmer resources including coloring sheets, printables and activities. We utilized all that twinkl has to offer and, to learn specifically about elephants, I bought these three things (all from Teachers Pay Teachers):

Elephants Mini Unit
Elephants Thematic Unit
Elephant Nomenclature Book

I like Teachers Pay Teachers because the products are all handmade by actual teachers and they're really inexpensive for the amount of time buying their products saves me. It also puts a few bucks in fellow teachers' pockets! : )

To end our Elmer week, we took a field trip to a nearby zoo with some friends and the kids had the chance to feed carrots to an African elephant, Butch! Beforehand, we made elephant-shaped cookies (the cookie cutter was bought on Amazon), to share with our friends on the drive there.

Check out my Pinterest Board for more ideas! https://www.pinterest.com/shelleypimentel/