Toddler Book Club - session 1 "Elmer"

I've recently started a "book club" for toddlers in our home (you can read more about how it works/the schedule here) and would love other bloggers to join in - so if you fancy reading the book and then doing a related activity (either what we do or something different), let me know.

If you'd like to join in without blogging just leave a comment, or if you blog about it, give me your URL and I'll update the post to include your link :)

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ELMER

Preparation the night before :)

We love Elmer the elephant (you can read more about how much and why in this post "A week of Elmer") - not only does the book have a lovely message, but the illustrations are bright and colourful and the jungle scenes are full of animals to talk about/copy noises etc.

Elmer is a multi-coloured elephant who gets fed up with being different. He tries to disguise himself so he fits in with the herd better but soon realises that standing out from the crowd isn't always a bad thing.

Snack: Rainbow platter

You can see more details in this post but here was the snack before the kids demolished it :)

Activity: Elmer painting 

This craft was super simple. I printed off an Elmer outline and then drew a few more with a Sharpie, laid out some paints and crayons and we were all set. As D is still a bit little to draw proper lines, I drew a rough chequerboard on Elmer in pencil - not that he stayed inside the lines at all but they acted as a prompt for him to think about different colours and what to put where. D really enjoyed this and did a mixture of paints and crayons and even came back to it later in the day to add some more details to it!

How did it work?

Not bad for our first session I think :) D was a lot more interested in listening to the story and doing the activity than the other toddler (we only had 2 this week). I'm not sure if that was because he knew the story, because it was me reading/setting up the activity or because it was being held at his house (and the other little guy was too distracted by all the new toys in our house!). 

But we survived 2 toddlers, a crawling baby and a rolling baby... and had fun with Elmer along the way. D even insisted on having his face painted again to really get into the mood :)

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At our next book club we're reading "The Cat in the Hat". If you've done any Elmer-related activities I'd love to hear below. Or if you're planning to join in next time it'd also be great to hear from you :)