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Elephants, Envelopes, Eggs & an Elf! Crafts for Letter E

How do you choose which vowel sounds to focus on when you create a letter of the week format for young children? I try to make sure that one sound is introduced: only one. And it is always the short sound. There will always be time later to introduce the knowledge that every vowel has a second sound. That's what makes the vowels stand out!

But I admit, this can make crafting tricky! There aren't THAT many items that begin with the short e sound as you might first imagine. And we want things that young children can actually relate with. Things that are already a part of their world.

I also always try to include one animal in the batch of crafts for letters. Children love animals. They learning about them and they love stories involving them. And there is, of course, no better animal for letter E than the ever popular Elephant!

Our Elephant Craft is a basic cut and paste. You can see the example of the finished craft in the bottom right hand corner. We also have a black and white version which is perfect for following up the story of Elmer. You know the Elmer story, right? By David McKee? If you don't, take a listen:

Elmer is such a great story, and one of my young students colored a VERY colorful elephant after she listened to Elmer.

This little elephant alone is enough to run over and pick up our new E craft packet!

But let's check out the other crafts, too. I want to show you our fun little mailbox that is so good for pretend playing with Envelopes.

Learning more about mail and envelopes is a perfect study for Letter E. And so I also include our booklist for letter E, which has some fabulous suggestions for kids to learn more about mail.

Also included in our Craft packet is a marvelous Egg craft that involves crushing eggshells. Small children love the tactile experience of feeling eggshells crunch under their hands. If desired, you can even paint the shells before you crunch them, like we did below:

But regardless, the end result is this adorable little spring chick:

Lastly, our Elf Craft Sheet is fabulous. Here's the colored version:

But we love it best when the children get to personalize their little elves, and color them up on their own.

Learn more about this fabulous collection of crafts for E (the short sound), here in our store.

E is for Elf on a Shelf

After a prolonged and unpleasant visit with the flu at our house, we are back to our letters of the week! Little Miss was raring to go with the Letter E and was very interested to hear the story behind the Glimmercat image below that introduces E in our packet.

All of the activities you find in this Letter E blog are available for download in our store, here: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Letter-of-the-Week-E-1981207

I've decided to break these posts down into our daily work with our letter of the week activities since they get awfully long with five days of activities. So, here's Day 1: E is for Elf

In our letter of the week packet for E, the first lesson plan above, explains the story behind this funny little elf in the image. As with all our vowels, we begin by introducing the short vowel sound, so E makes the sound of "eh" in this entire packet. (We'll go back and introduce long vowels after the alphabet is complete).

Next, I printed out the Letter E matching game, and we went over the pictures that begin with the letter E. Some of these (like Engine and Eggplant) were new for Little Miss, but she has this cutting thing down.

I have a new ploy for the Letter Matching Game print-outs. I like to print them out in color, but they are SO easy to see through when we do that. So I found these neat glitter foam sheets that have adhesive on the back, after you peel off the paper.

We stuck them to these neat adhesive sheets, and now we have a game that we can keep around for awhile because it will last better than plain paper will. Woo hoo! I like this addition!

For our craft, we printed out the Elf paper and here is Little Miss adding her favorite color to this little paper Elf. We don't actually do the Elf on a Shelf thing in our home, but we do watch the movie, "Elf", so we still have some context for elves.

In fact, if you need a little Elf to sit on a shelf, this paper craft Elf works pretty good. Just keep in mind that small hands may need some help cutting out around those detailed parts.

Little Miss decided her elf needed arms and some more pink (everyone needs more pink) so here she is touching him up now that he is taped together.

Letter of the Week Packet for E

E is for Elephant! Right? That's usually the first thing to come to mind, and we definitely have a full day where we showcase elephants in our Letter Packet. In fact, the lesson plan for E looks like, this:

You could make an elephant from egg cartons, like in this picture below. Although really cute, they were a challenge. And I knew a craft this complicated won't work well for a classroom...

So, I created this fun and easy elephant in our curriculum packet, that should work great for having a little elephant "on hand". Haha. Well, once they cut it out and stick one finger through for the trunk, that is.

But my favorite craft in this packet is the Eggshell Craft. Here's why: Children love getting tactile. And they got to smash their eggshells before gluing them onto their little egg. Which, any kid will tell you, is awesome.

I like to include extra ideas here, so don't forget how fun the old blown out eggshell can be to decorate:

Ahhh, They're so cute!

Using yellow paint and our trusty Q-tips, our kids painted their eggs completely and then let them dry. I had these little feathers on hand, and the kids glued one feather to the top hole (covering up one blow-hole), and we glued their foamy feet to the bottom, (covering up the other blowhole).

So when you're done, no holes show, and you have this cute little egg chick:

Super cute, but more for the homeschooling mommy then a teacher with a roomful of kids to manage.

Whatever the Eggshell craft you decide to do, we have a fun puzzle to follow it up with. And of course, this little chicken is setting on...Eggs!

Here's another little craft I made, in an attempt to come up with something clever for "Envelope".

The cutting was tricky, so small children will need help. And tape is the sticky element of choice for this one.

In spite of the extra challenges, this was such a hit with the kiddos. It's the whole pretend play thing. They just loved pretending to mail their letters to each other. They loved dropping their envelopes into the mailboxes.

A few other notes about some of the activities in our letter E packet, which is available on our TeachersPay Teachers store:

The schtick for the letter E had to do with an Elf that our Glimmercat character meets. The Elf is wearing Earmuffs so he can't hear our little cat friend. So, he puts his hand behind his ear and says, "Eh?"

And, of course, the Letter E says "Eh", so we have a little fun with this and include a little Elf craft in our packet, as well.

And if you'd like to pick up the pages you see here, along with some writing practice sheets, a Letter E matching game, flashcards and many other fun activities and reading literacy pages, you can find it at our TeachersPayTeachers store here: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Letter-of-the-Week-E-1981207

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Elephants, Envelopes, Eggs & an Elf! Crafts for Letter E

E is for Elf on a Shelf

Letter of the Week Packet for E