Elephants and a Giant Crossword Puzzle

Elephant Week

Every time we pick up a book, my kindergartner amazes me with his reading skills !  I often choose books and plan on reading them to my son on my own.  As I read it, I realize he knows most of the words and he ends up reading it to me.

Since we have been reading a lot of elephant books this week, I grabbed Elephants by Kate Davies and planned on reading it to my kindergartner, but he read almost all of it on his own!  We read about 10 pages a night and when we were done I could tell that he really felt like we had accomplished something!  Don't get me wrong, there are many nights he just wants me to read and he doesn't want to put the effort in, but I always ask him to read a little bit to me each night for some practice.  He usually smiles the whole time he is reading, so I don't think he thinks it is that bad.

Elephants is an Usborne First Reading Level 4 book and is filled with wonderful facts and inviting illustrations of elephants. There are many sight words in this book, but also some terrific vocabulary words.  While we were reading, my son and I discussed words like slink, tusks, female, male, and herd.  There were, of course, some other challenging words that he didn't know such as ordinary, notice, or partner, but I just read those words for him.  This book also has a great list of "quick links" that takes you to kid friendly sites with elephant videos, pictures, and puzzles.

There were a lot of new vocabulary words that my son was introduced to while reading this book, so I decided to make a crossword puzzle with the words on Discovery Education.

After I printed the puzzle out, I copied it with marker onto large graph paper because I knew that the large paper would be more exciting.  I wrote down the answer words on the big puzzle, but left the clues on my paper so I could read them to him as he worked. 

First, we read through all of the vocabulary words.  I read the clues and he wrote the correct answer.

He was very proud of himself when he had finished the puzzle!

While my kindergartner worked on the crossword puzzle, my three year old colored an elephant page that we found through the Usborne Quick Links.  

After a full afternoon of playing outside, the crossword puzzle and coloring slowed everyone down a bit.

Before bed, my three year old and I spent a little time together on the computer.  We watched a baby elephant play, listened to an African and Asian elephant, and did an elephant puzzle all by finding the quick link site for Usborne.  I loved that I found 5 different elephant activities that were appropriate for my son without having to search the internet for a long time!

I have become a fan of these First Reading books by Usborne and can't wait to get a few more for my kindergartner to work with over the summer!

More Elephant Books from Elephant Week

I Dream of an Elephant

If Elephants Wore Pants

I've Got an Elephant

Little Elephant

Elephants Can Paint Too

But No Elephants

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