African Elephants

This week, we centered our activities around African Elephants. It was the week of Halloween, so a great opportunity for fun eats! We made "bark" with "sticks" out of a few pieces of our Trick-or-Treat haul. The kids really ran with Create day where they pieced together construction paper with tape to make an elephant. Movement was so fun! We had Alex play "African Safari music" while dancing around on our tip-toes the way an elephant would. Check out our activitys below!

All activities at Glass Half Something require parent supervision! Safety first, friends!

Books! Books! Books!

This week was Halloween which threw us off a few days but Wednesday, we made it to the library. After successfully returning all of last week's books, we arguably overborrowed from the kid's elephant section. Our books help us put together a list of facts learned! How to be an Elephant: Growing up in the African Wild was fantastic, fact-filled book. It is for a bit of an older crowd but it taught us so much!

Here were our top 3 picks:

How to be an Elephant: Growing up in the African Wild by Katherine Roy
- This was a fantastic, fact-filled book. It is for a bit of an older crowd, but 5 year old really enjoyed it! It's where we got our favorite fact: baby elephants sometimes eat their mom's poop!
Elephants Remember: A True Story by Jennifer O'Connell
- Based on a true story, this book required a bit of sensor for my young ones. Overall, a good heart felt message about nature's giant.
National Geographic Kids Great Migrations Elephants by Laura Marsh
- Geared more toward my youngest, this book helps define things in a more relatable way to kids. It's amazing they travel so far!

While not about African Elephants, we read and love Mo Willems, Elephant and Piggie book series. They're simple, funny and display a great friendship between two unlikely friends.

Create!

This week, I went simple, with little preparation. I cut out elephant ears, an oval for the face and rolled up a construction paper trunk. With markers and washi tape, they each pieces together their African Elephants that we hung on the fridge. This works on fine motor taping skills, even puzzling together the components of an elephant. By the end of the week, they'd added the rest of the body by themselves!

Tip!

I like to pull out a bucket of supplies from the art cart and set it on their work station. This helps keep the art cart a little neater throughout the week.

Get Moving!

Elephants walk on their tip-toes! We asked Alexa to play "sounds from the African Safari" and danced around on our tip-toes. Our crafts from Tuesday wound up a bit like masks, so the kids danced with them as well.

Eats!

Elephants are herbivores: they eat sticks, grass, plants, tree bark and sometimes, mom's poop. Since it's Halloween week, we had tons of candy and chose "bark" as one of our foods! We also dyed grass-like pasta green for "grass" and had mozzarella balls for "mom's poop".

"Bark"

The tough one, and full of the most life lessons, was "bark". We made this bark the day after Halloween. "Let's call it Halloween Bark", exclaimed my oldest. Such a great idea and a great way to use up a few of those pieces.

"Poop"

Elephant poop was easy! Small mozzarella balls from Trader Joe's checked this box.

"Grass"

Grass was next on the list for ease. We cooked up Trader Joe's Trofie pasta, added grassfed butter and green food coloring. This is a great opportunity for the kids to self-serve.

My kids chose a handful of plain candies to melt: Crunch, Hershey's and a Reese's. Unwrapping candies is hard fine motor work for tinies, life lesson #1! We talked through how melting chocolate is a delicate task. It's easy to burn so the "right" way would be a double boiler. A double boiler is boiling water under a pot of chocolate. This allows the hot water to melt the chocolate rather than a direct heat source, life lesson #2! But of course, we're no five star restaurant, so we talked about the "easy" way to melt our chocolate in the microwave. In 15 second increments, stirring well between spurts of heating. It took about 45 seconds to melt our chocolate base.

We spread our chocolate on parchment paper. They kids chose pretzels "sticks" and M&Ms to mash up in a plastic bag and throw on top of the chocolate base. Toss that into the freezer for 15 minutes and viola!

Summary

Each week, the kids summarize our animal to Dad using their top 5 facts, their crafts and favorite book.

Top Five Facts

Our favorite! Elephant babies will eat adult poop for food and nutrients.
Elephant babies grow in their mom's belly for 22 months.
Female elephants remain together with their herd for life.
Elephants walk on their tip-toes.
Elephants are herbivores: they eat sticks, grass, plants, tree bark and sometimes mom's poop.