#15 - Elephant

[Marie]

Lesson #15 Elephant

[Winkie]

Books that we used with this unit:

Info books:
Zoo Animals - DK
The Biggest Animal on Land - Allan Fowler
Baby Elephant - Lucille Recht Penner
Elephant Families - Arthur Dorros

Fiction books:
God Didn't Put Elephants in Trees - Elizabeth Elaine Watson
Seven Blind Mice - Ed Young
Jumbo - Rhoda Blumberg (a true account)
Horton Hears a Who - Dr Seuss
Horton Hatched the Egg - Dr Seuss

[angelah97]

Learningpage.com is a great source for lessons plans, worksheets, murals and etc. Make sure to click on the tabs across the top for all the sources. There is a huge mural you can cut out and put together and then glue on each animal.

http://learningpage.com/pages/menu_wkshts/fact_zoo.html

Angela

[Guest]

Learningpage.com is a great source for lessons plans, worksheets, murals and etc. Make sure to click on the tabs across the top for all the sources. There is a huge mural you can cut out and put together and then glue on each animal.

http://learningpage.com/pages/menu_wkshts/fact_zoo.html

Angela

Membership is free!

[JoyfulDancer]

Here is another link for a mural. We love Jan Brett's books. This mural goes with her book Honey Honey Lion. There are also tons of great free things on her website. http://janbrett.com/mural_hhl/honey_hon ... _mural.htm

[semushlich]

Ellison the Elephant by Eric Drachman
ISBN: 0970380917

[mrs_mike98]

A book we enjoyed was "Just for Elephants" by Carol Buckely.

Also, a website that goes along with this book is www.elephants.com, it has lots of pictures, an elephant cam, and also an elephant curriculum (http://www.elephants.com/pdf/elepcurk_3.pdf).

We've had lots of fun studying elephants!

[twinglemom]

Here are links to some fun elephant crafts.

http://www.himandus.net/elefunteria/ele ... _main.html

http://www.dltk-kids.com/animals/elephants.htm

And here is a cute idea for making an elephant headband and trunk.

http://familycrafts.about.com/cs/zoowil ... lelehb.htm

[RachelT]

Here are more fun books about elephants:

Non-fiction: Elephants by Annette Barkhausen
Elephant (Eyewitness books)

Fiction: Emma Kate by Patricia Polacco
Horton Hatches the Egg by Dr. Seuss
Horton Hears a Who by Dr. Suess
Good Night Harry by Kim Lewis

Happy reading!
Rachel

[kellybell]

Posted: Thu May 10, 2007 10:41 pm

Field trip idea:

Zoo's Africa display (elephant, zebra)

[Kirsty]

Hi

My girls, both doing MFW-K, are great readers. I always do a topic search at the library to find readers that match our topic.

This week we read 2 Easy Readers by Mo Willems

An Elephant and Piggie Book : My friend is sad
An Elephant and Piggie Book : There is a bird on your head

My younger reader managed both of these with a little help. I really enjoyed them too! What a difference to all those Dick and Jane's we dragged ourselves through at school!

[FreshKid]

I got distracted reading all the great ideas on the forums, and now don't have much time to post!

Here are the books we read for Elephant:
Little Elephants Song
I Love My Mama (I really liked this one because the baby elephant plays a game with Mama where they see whose trunk is bigger. I do this with my almost-three-year-old, but we play whose hand is bigger.)
Charlie at the Zoo by Marcus Pfister
Grandma's Elephant's In Charge (I used this as my non-fiction book.)
Elephant's Never Forget by Anushka Ravishankar (I grabbed this at the last minute thinking it was the book from the TM. IT IS NOT! I was trying to figure out how it fit into the lesson. Still a good book!)
17 Kings and 42 Elephants by Margaret Mahy
"Stand Back," Said the Elephant, "I'm Going to Sneeze!" by Patricia Thomas
Elephants Can Paint Too! by Katya Arnold (A lady tells about how elephants can paint like people do. At the end, there is a page that talks about how elephants were used for work, but as more land is being taken for development, the elephants can't earn their keep. So, they taught them to paint. My 2.5 year old started holding her Aquadoodle pen with her mouth. I wonder where she got that idea. A few days into the next unit, we also saw a Curious George episode with an elephant painting.)
Tacky in Trouble by Helen Lester (Tacky is a Penguin but his trouble is with an elephant.)

The website http://www.arkive.com has some great video of wild animals. (Search in the "Explore By Species" field, then "Mammals.") We watched a baby elephant being born. VERY INTERESTING!!! (not graphic) It looked like the baby came out back feet first, like someone sliding down a playground slide.

[FreshKid]

I just remembered that when we did the elephant mask out of the paper bag, we used M&Ms for treats as DS is allergic to nuts. We did a few tricks for his treats. The next to the last "Command" was "go to your cage." M&M. The last command was, "Clean up your cage." And we did!
I love it when things work out like that! :)

[cbollin]

We've enjoyed a DVD series called Disney's Animal World. Our library has the one called
Elephants and Rhinos.

Just enough information and quick quiz with it.

-crystal

[nikidust]

We made elephants from an egg carton as seen here: http://www.daniellesplace.com/HTML/ElephantCrafts.html and the kids really love playing with them. We did the elephants before we started school for the day (day 2) and let them dry while we were getting our work done. The kids got through school quickly because they wanted to play with their elephants.

We printed a world map coloring page and the kids looked in one of our library books to see where elephants live, and colored the spots on their map. We talked a lot about how to tell an African elephant from an Asian elephant and which one lives where on the map.

This has been a fun unit for us already because the kids really like elephants. We're hoping the weather will be nice enough to visit the zoo tomorrow when my husband is off work. If not I may take them myself later in the week. I'm going to check the zoo schedule and try to catch the elephant training and feeding times.

[2mymasuly]

Here is a list of some of the books we used for the Elephant unit study.

Nonfiction:

Elephants Life in the Wild by Monica Kulling
An Elephant in the Backyard by Richard Sobol (kind of lengthy, so I skimmed it myself and then gave the kids a summary as we looked through the pictures)

Fiction:

Little Elephant's Trunk by Hazel Lincoln (great story about a baby elephant learning all the uses for his trunk)
The Elephants' Ears by Catherin Chambers
That's What Friends Are For by Florence Parry Heide (can discuss Proverbs 17:17 how a friend loveth at all times...truly helping during troubled times)

We also decided on Day #4 (after doing tricks for peanuts) that we would walk like elephants in a single line using our "trunks" (arm against our nose) to hold onto the "tail" (back of shirt) of the elephant in front of us. We are even going to do a "Elephant Show" for Daddy tonight to show him all the uses of the Elephant trunk!! It should be fun and amusing...I'll have to be sure to have the video camera turned on.


Hope you and your family enjoy these books as much as our family!

Have a blessed day in the Lord!!

Heather

[DaniWestRN]

A nice book I found which teaches colors using rhythms about elephants.
I dream of an elephant written and illustrated by Ami Rubinger

[tangomoon]

We just watched a video on African animal life that is available currently on Netflix Instant, Animals are Beautiful People. It was geared pretty well for the younger crew. (Note: There are a few evolutionary references, and one mild profanity in the last 20 minutes when one animal is antagonizing another, described as "for the h*** of it"). It's from 1975, and there are many descriptions of animals in terms of how their behaviors fit with human character.

Life Size Zoo by Teruyuki Komiya is a really neat book that has life-size photographs of different zoo animals. For the elephant, that means only the eye and some of the head is shown! We also enjoyed Ballet of the Elephants by Leda Schubert, which is a true story of how Circus Polka, a dance for 50 elephants and ballerinas was created.

[MuzzaBunny]

Our library list for Elephants!

Elmer McKee, David. DD was a big fan of the Elmer books
Elmer takes off McKee, David.
Elmer and Wilbur McKee, David.
Kidogo McGrory, Anik.
Humphrey's corner Hunter, Sally
Humphrey's bedtime Hunter, Sally
Tembo takes charge Feldman, Thea.
Tarra and Bella : the elephant and dog who became best friends Buckley, Carol, DD and I both loved this one. Great photos, sweet, true story
Elephants and their calves Hall, Margaret,
Elephant Magloff, Lisa.
Big, rough and wrinkly Butterfield, Moira Very age appropiate info and photos
Grandma elephant's in charge Jenkins, Martin. DD loved this one too
Ballet of the elephants Schubert, Leda.
Elephants can paint, too! Arnold, Katya. Cute with nice information
17 kings and 42 elephants Mahy, Margaret.
Encore for Eleanor Peet, Bill. All the Peet books were excellent
Ella Peet, Bill.
The ant and the elephant Peet, William B.
Never mail an elephant Thaler, Mike, DD thought this was hilarious
The elephant's child Kipling, Rudyard, Skip this one. It was mean spirited
Eight enormous elephants Dolan, Penny
Here comes Kate Chorao, Kay.
Uncle Elephant Lobel, Arnold.
Fisher-Price little people opposite safari Fisher-Price
Elephant families Dorros, Arthur.
Ellison the elephant Drachman, Eric.
I love my mama Kavanagh, Peter.
"Stand back," said the elephant, "I'm going to sneeze!" Thomas, Patricia,
Elephants never forget! Ravishankar, Anushka.
Little elephant's trunk Lincoln, Hazel.

[psalm126mama]

Mister Roger's Neighborhood on Amazon - free with Prime or $1.99 per episode

Mister Rogers' Neighborhood 2000, Ep. 1756 "2000-01"
"Mister Rogers finds a 500 pound baby - at the zoo! It's a baby elephant, and he learns how its mother and the zookeeper care for it. There's a video of how people make backpacks, and In Make-Believe, the King wants to see inside one."

Mister Rogers' Neighborhood Season 5, Ep. 1 "Josephine Giraffe (#1606) A Visit to the San Diego Wild Animal Park"
"Mister Rogers visits San Diego's Wild Animal Park to see lots of different animals including elephants, tigers and giraffes. They're much like the pretend ones the neighbors are talking about as they plan a special musical in Make-Believe."

Mister Rogers' Neighborhood 1987, Ep. 1585 "1987-10"
"Mister Rogers and Betty Aberlin visit the circus to see acrobats, elephants and tigers. They go backstage to watch a clown put on his make up. In Make-Believe, Daniel's friends help him overcome his fear of clowns and other costumes."

Mister Rogers' Neighborhood 1986, Ep. 1570 "1986-10"
"Mister Rogers visits a giant elephant building and a toy lending library where children play with different toys. And he shows a video of a famous roadside attraction, Lucy the Margate Elephant. In Make-Believe, Prince Tuesday learns to ride his bike - and to share it."

[Yodergoat]

During the Elephant unit, we enjoyed learning the true story of Jumbo, the world's most famous elephant. I found a library book which was a bit above her level and so I summarized it slightly as I read and we studied the pictures. It is actually a sad and poignant story that ends in tragedy, but my daughter was enthralled and still talks about Jumbo months later. It also gave us a chance to discuss exaggeration in advertising (the circus claimed Jumbo was much larger than he actually was) as we looked at the outlandishly scaled posters of Jumbo. We got to talk about entertainment and the circus long ago, about kind treatment of performance animals and lots of other great things. Learning about Jumbo is one of my fondest memories of the Elephant unit!

We also learned about mammoths and mastodons and read a news article about a frozen mammoth calf. Then, using an elephant puppet and a mammoth puppet we borrowed from the library, we discussed the differences between them. We also talked about how to tell apart Asian and African elephants.

We looked at photos and the website of an elephant sanctuary in Tennessee (our home state), which was interesting because it is unusual to see elephants in temperate and even snowy surroundings. It was intriguing to learn about the elephants' social life and friendships with each other at the sanctuary.

Elephant was a great unit, long to be remembered.

[lea_lpz]

Danielle's website had some cute elephant crafts. I had dh do the egg carton elephant with the which was darling and we also the simple folded paper elephant and wrote the verse on it since we misplaced our elephant badge.

http://www.daniellesplace.com/html/ElephantCrafts.html

In addition, we read some books on African animals in general and made a trip to the San Francisco zoo. All and all a very fun unit.

African Animal Books:
1) Africa Calling
2) Over in the Grasslands
3) Crocodile's Tears
4) Honey, Honey, Lion!

[MelissaB]

Try the youtube video "ORIGINAL Elephant Art" (all caps on youtube).

It's a video of an elephant... painting ... a picture of an elephant. It's pretty cool.

...Also, don't forget to go by Answers in Genesis Kids website and watch the science video on Elephants. Wonderful information and really interesting.