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.

Dandelions, Dogs, Dinosaurs and Ducks: Crafts for Letter D


When I am looking a little something extra for little bodies to do, my preference always leans toward the haptic activity.  I was such a haptic learner when I was a child:  anything I could pick up, grasp, touch, and feel was much more likely to be something I retained.  And I find as I teach, that probably most small children fall into that category at the Kinder levels.


This Dandelion craft seen above, is exactly that kind of activity.  Sure, we have the black and white version so the children can color it first, but the real fun begins as soon as they stick on the play-dough (or clay or Styrofoam ball) and start filling the thing full of Q-tips that have been cut into halves or thirds.  That is the best.

I love to follow up a craft with a great story, and yes, thanks to my Children's Librarian background, I even have a great story about Dandelions.  It is The Dandelion Seed by Joseph Anthony and you can check it out on this read-aloud.


Thus begins our four new letter D crafts in our brand new D Craft packet which you can purchase in our store!


But let me give you a glimpse of the other three included crafts, too.  First, you can't let letter D go by without doing something with Dinosaurs.  Our Dinosaur craft uses shape identifiers (square, circles, triangles) to allow children to put the dinosaur shapes exactly where they're supposed to go.


Another fun craft that we offer in our D Crafts packet is a duck craft.  This little critter takes a lot of cutting and folding: perfect activities for those little ones who still need to practice this kind of hand-eye coordination.


And last but not least, we also include a little Dog craft, using a toilet paper tube.  This is one of those projects that your little ones will go home, holding proudly, and maybe include in their pretend play.




As you know, if you follow my blog, I can hardly let a craft go by, without recommending some great read-alouds to go with it.   So, in our letter D craft packet, I include a letter D Booklist.  You will probably find some books you are familiar with, but hopefully, I have given you a few new ones to check out, too:



Each of our crafts has a place for children to write their names (or have an adult write the name) so that student works are easily identifiable.

You can find all these crafts shown here,  and our other fun Letter Craft packets in our store