ABC SERIES: E is for ELEPHANT

This week we learned all about elephants. Where they live… What they eat… How they use their trunks for amazing things like lifting logs…

Elephants are big animals. Last summer we visited a zoo that had a giant elephant statue. Lanae loved climbing on it and running around underneath it while being chased by her uncle. We really love elephants around here. So when the letter E rolled around it seemed like the obvious choice.

Pretend play–I’m starting to see Lanae engage in pretend play a whole lot more lately. A doll is not just a doll, its her baby that she wraps up, reads a story and puts down for a nap. She plays games with her stuffed animals and builds castles to drive her cars through. Whenever she “reads” a story she talks about the little things that the characters are supposedly doing. She is constantly using her imagination.

To help her develop her imagination even more, Scott and I have started having little pretend play sessions. This week, we went on a Safari. We made binoculars with our hands and looked around to see what animals we could find. After we found each animal we talked about what those animals might be doing.

At this age, talking about different things is just helping her vocabulary grow. And hopefully the short amounts of time we spend showing her how to play will help her be happier during independent play time!

We actually watched our powerpoint twice this week. The first time, there was nothing special about it. The second time, we made some changes that made Lanae super excited…

Oh how we love technology!!

The last thing we did to wrap up our week was practice using our trunks to suck up raisins and peanuts–you know, like an elephant might use its trunk to grab an apple. She thought it was absolutely hilarious when I showed her what we were doing and she had a lot of fun practicing sucking them up herself.

She actually was able to suck up two raisins and she was so excited about it!!! Mostly she just loved snacking on the trail mix after. But this was a great activity to develop fine motor skills, concentration, patience and the idea that sometimes you just have to try, try, try in order to be successful at something!