E is for Elephants!

We studied about the letter Ee this week,
and, of course, we had to learn about Elmer the Elephant!

I found this printable here.
We used dot markers to decorate them.

This cute book about this Elmer who is different.
He celebrates who he is and stays true to himself.

We had them act out the Elmer book with the puppets they made.

For our snack we made some tastey elephant treats!

We took biscut dough and stretched it around a marshmallow,
dipped it into melted butter,
and dipped into cinnamon sugar.
For the ears we used cinnamon rolls cut in half.
Then we cooked it according to the biscuit container.
Thanks Acts Homeschool for the idea!

I know I should make healther treats,
but I like to make them memorable for kids! ;)

Next we moved onto patterns
This is my favorite way to introduce patterns.
I lost my hippo I used to have when I quit teaching,
so this was the perfect opportunity to make another.

My hubby sketched out this elephant in 2 minutes.
I should have used him before to do my art work!

So I used a stencil to create a shape pattern onto word strips,
you can also use stickers.
When teaching you pull out the first part of the pattern
like if it's an AB pattern pull out the first three shapes,
and then you have them guess each subsequent shape.
It makes them feel really smart.

Then we went to the classroom for math center.
I made these the summer before I started teaching first grade.
All I used was the pattern block die cuts and glued them onto small word strips, and them laminating them.

All I used was the pattern block die cuts and glued them onto small word strips, and laminated them.


The kids loved doing this.

I also made these during summer time.
 I made a black line copy of the maze,
and colored in a pattern that the children extended.

This link and this link aren't exactly the same as what I had, but you could adapt it a little.

E is for Easter!

Today we did an counting egg hunt.

That sounds a little drab, but it was actually really fun!!

At Preschool we started learning about the letter Ee!

So all week we focused on fun Eastery things we could do to learn about the letter Ee.

We read The Golden Egg Book,

By Margaret Wise Brown.

(She also wrote Good Night Moon,

and she has written tons of Bunny themed books)

This book is darling, and is one of my favorite Easter books!

So for our hunt, I printed the numbers 1-5 and

cut them out and put one number in each egg.

After they found their eggs,

Then they had to tell me what number they had,

and they took that many pieced of candy.

The kids really didn't mind at all that the candy did not come in the eggs, because I explained that the would eventually get the candy.

I wish I would have done this with my Kindergartners,

This is something room mothers,

or sixth grade helpers,

would love to help the kids count out their candy.

And I would have definitely had four or five candy stations.

You could also do this with other grades,

using addition for first and second grades,

subtraction, even division or multiplication for the upper grades.

In keeping with the Easter theme, we also read The Runaway Bunny, also by Margret Wise Brown.

It's about a little Bunny who threatens to run away,

and his mommy tells him all the ways she will love him and find him.

I found these masks at Walmart for $1,

so we decided to act out the Runaway Bunny.

Happy Easter week!!