Ee is for Elephant

Today we starting learning the Letter Ee.  Evan was so excited because 'E' is his letter!  He's recognized the Big E for some time now and we've worked on writing it before.  Whenever you press the Letter Ee on Evan's toy laptop, it says, "Let's celebrate your letter, Evan!"  So throughout the day, we celebrated the Letter Ee by singing, "E chacha chacha V chacha chacha A chacha chacha N!  EVAN!"  I told him that the word 'Evan' was my favorite word in the whole wide world that starts with the Letter E!  He felt pretty special!  He practiced writing the Letter Ee on the board and on his Ee flashcard.  The little e was more difficult for him.  He wasn't as familiar with that one.  He kept wanting to call it a 'c'.  It actually worked out okay though because the way they wanted me to teach him to write it was to make a little c and then draw the line.  He'll get it!


Evan celebrating his letter!  E chacha chacha!



Practice makes perfect!

Then I introduced him to Elizabeth E and we read the mini book, "What Begins With E?"  Of course his first question as soon as we were done reading it was, "Can we play a puppet show with the new one?!"  Good thing I had the pieces ready to go!  He helped assemble Elizabeth E.

 

Let me introduce you to, Elizabeth E.

After we were done with the introduction of the Letter Ee, we moved on to Ee is for Elephant.  We talked about elephants the rest of the day - literally!  He fell asleep on me tonight while sitting on the couch talking about elephants!


Ee is for Elephant!


I had made a little mini book about elephants with several elephant pictures in it.  We looked at that and talked about the features that made elephants so unique.  I then took him to the San Diego Zoo's website where we could watch several elephant videos, see a live Elephant Cam, and play an elephant game. 

Elephant videos:  http://www.elephantodyssey.com/video/
Live Elephant Cam:  http://www.sandiegozoo.org/elephantcam/index.html
Elephant Odyssey Game:  http://www.elephantodyssey.com/game/

Talk about mesmerized...he would have been content to play the elephant game the rest of the day!  We played and played until we conquered the whole thing.  The graphics really were pretty cute.  However, if you were going to play it with an older child that could read, you would have to sit down and explain some things to them because evolutionary concepts were thrown in throughout.  Why do they have to do that?!


"I want to play my elephant game!"

The only way I could get him away from the computer game was to entice him with Play-doh!  It worked!  He was so excited to make Play-doh elephants!  He wanted to start with pink elephants.  (You can only imagine how thrilled Daddy is that pink is his favorite color!)  Nonetheless, pink elephants it was!  We made a whole rainbow of elephants!  By the time we were done, we had 10 Play-doh elephants.  While working on the elephants we sang: "1 jumbo, 2 jumbo, 3 jumbo elephants.  4 jumbo, 5 jumbo, 6 jumbo elephants.  7 jumbo, 8 jumbo, 9 jumbo elephants.  10 jumbo elephants at the circus!"


"I want a pink elephant!"



Evan loved his Play-doh elephants!

1 jumbo, 2 jumbo, 3 jumbo elephants...

After making 10 jumbo elephants for the circus, we read, "Circus Caps For Sale" by Esphyr Slobodkina.  We also later read, "Dumbo."  Evan has only been to a circus once but he doesn't really remember it, and it's probably a good thing he doesn't.  [Soap Box Moment:  I honestly don't think that we will ever go back.  First of all, it's way to expensive.  Secondly, the clowns are terrifying.  And more importantly, those people need to put more clothes on.  YIKES!  The immodesty made ME uncomfortable.  I could go on and on, but I'll climb off my soap box now!]  I had some circus themed stickers and Evan made a circus scene with them in his little elephant mini book. 



Ladies and Gentlemen, introducing, 10 jumbo elephants!!!

Evan also got to paint a big picture of an Elephant.  This time, he wanted a blue elephant! 

Proud of his painting!

While his painting dried, it was Show Time!  I gave him an elephant puppet and he was SO excited!  We put on show after show.  He even used his stuffed elephants in his show.  He acted out lots of scenes from the elephant computer game - mostly the scenes from where we died by falling off a cliff or being eaten by a saber tooth tiger (acted by a stuffed lion!).  I think he just liked knocking the stuffed elephants off the puppet stage!
 

Super excited about his elephant puppet!



Elephant puppet with her herd!

After the puppet shows, Evan worked on a couple items to go in his Ee Lapbook.  

Coloring an 'Ee is for Elephant' picture to go in his Lapbook.

While we were waiting for Daddy to get home, he worked on an Elephant Lacing Card.


Lacing cards are great for Hand-Eye coordination.

 He could hardly wait for Daddy to get home, because he knew Daddy was bringing something special!  We had read, "Horton Hears a Who" by Dr. Suess, and Daddy was bringing home the movie version.  He was so excited to watch it!  (Plus, I had told him that Daddy might let him eat some popcorn while he watched it!)  I'm not really sure which he was more excited about.  :)  I had a meeting to go to, so Daddy watched the movie with the boys - twice!  I told Adam that when the movie was over, I wanted Evan to compare and contrast the book and movie version and then decide which he liked best.  So when I got home from my meeting, I asked Adam how it went.  When he asked Evan which one he liked better, Evan said, "The elephant game.  When the elephant fell in the hole and got eaten by a lion!"  HA!  Gotta love that little guy!  From the moment I stepped in the door, Evan was asking if we could play it again!