Now we’re a bit more into a ‘lockdown’ routine (including homeschool), I’ve managed to carve out more time and energy to do more craft activities with my 3, which actually we all love. Yesterday we had a go at an Elmer Elephant milk bottle craft, making the colourful elephant character out of large plastic milk bottles (although you could use any size to be honest). I’d seen this this activity over on a Facebook ‘lockdown’ group, but thought I’d share how to do it over here on the blog, although it’s dead easy to be honest!
You will need…
- 1 (or more) empty and clean plastic milk bottle containers
- Scissors
- Brightly coloured tissue paper cut into equal size and shape squares
- PVA glue and glue spreader
- Black pen
- Googly eyes
Instructions…
Stand the milk jug up, and draw around the top half to just below where the handle finishes (the handle will be the trunk), including an ‘arch’ on either side to cut out to form ‘legs’ for your elephant. and cut into it just below the handle. This will form the elephant’s trunk. Then cut off the entire bottom half of the milk bottle.
Using an Elmer picture book that we had, we talked about how the square pattern went on his body and that there should be no gaps. My 7 year old was very adept at forming the patchwork pattern for herself and gluing the tissue paper squares on, where as my two year old was definitely from the school of ‘more is more’!
He’s good with his colours now, but this was a great activity for reinforcing them, and also talking about the ‘square’ shape for shape recognition.
Once the bottle was completely covered, including the trunk, we stuck the googly eyes on, and left our elephants to dry.
Such a fun activity, with lots of scope for playing with them afterwards, and led to conversations about where elephants lived etc etc.
So here you go, 3 Elmer Elephants!
I think we might use some little milk bottles and add some baby Elmers to the family!
See some of my other crafts and activities for children
