Elmer the Elephant (elephants are hard to draw!)

Elmer is such an adorable book, and it is always a crowd pleaser with the little ones.  We are going on a zoo field trip in a couple of weeks, so I am trying to squeeze in as many zoo animals as I can before we go!  Today was elephant day in the lovely world of Kindergarten.  

The kids really wanted to make an Elmer craft, but I didn't have any time to...

A.  Make the craft

B. Prep the craft

C.  Actually do the craft

So instead, I googled "directed drawing of an elephant" and we went to town on drawing one and writing sentences.  I lead the class, shape by shape, of how to draw an elephant.  Once we finished, they traced their pencil lines with a marker.  Then I asked them to draw vertical and horizontal lines to make the patchwork, to then color in.

Once they colored Elmer in, they wrote a couple of sentences to accompany their drawing.

I think this little guy is adorable!  Look how cute he turned out...

Sometimes kids can get overwhelmed when you ask them to draw something specific (aka, an elephant...) so I took the directed drawing route to practice listening and following directions, AND to make them all feel successful in their drawing ability.