Elephant Appreciation Day
Last Friday, 22nd September, was Elephant Appreciation Day. Bletchingdon nursery were very lucky to have Jade share her love of elephants with them through a range of different invitations to play.
Jade says, “It was truly special to share my appreciation for the African elephants. I feel so lucky to have been brought up in Zimbabwe with these beautiful creatures on my doorstep. I got the chance to share my love and see the fascination through the children’s eyes.
In the preceding week, I prepared some activities, facts and games. I got my family in Africa involved and asked them to send me their favourite pictures taken of elephants and showed these to the children.
We watched a video of African elephants in the wild, then had a look at the world map and spoke about where the elephants live. I had some interesting facts about elephants which the children really enjoyed and I got asked loads of good questions.
We then went outside and measured ourselves next to a string which is the average size of an African elephant (3.2 metres!).
I made an “elephant trunk” and we knocked over blocks using our bodies to move the trunk backwards and forwards – this took a lot of concentration and coordination skills!
We then had to toss the rings onto the elephants trunk, the children were much better than me!
Finally the children got to colour an elephant and they did a fabulous job, I really liked their choice of colours. It was an absolute pleasure being able to share bits of my culture and upbringing with the children.”
Thank you Jade. We all had lots of fun learning about and gaining an appreciation for elephants.
