Elephants, Envelopes, Eggs & an Elf! Crafts for Letter E

How do you choose which vowel sounds to focus on when you create a letter of the week format for young children?  I try to make sure that one sound is introduced: only one.  And it is always the short sound.  There will always be time later to introduce the knowledge that every vowel has a second sound.  That's what makes the vowels stand out! 


But I admit, this can make crafting tricky!  There aren't THAT many items that begin with the short e sound as you might first imagine.  And we want things that young children can actually relate with.  Things that are already a part of their world. 

I also always try to include one animal in the batch of crafts for letters.  Children love animals.  They learning about them and they love stories involving them.  And there is, of course, no better animal for letter E than the ever popular Elephant! 

Our Elephant Craft is a basic cut and paste.  You can see the example of the finished craft in the bottom right hand corner.  We also have a black and white version which is perfect for following up the story of Elmer.  You know the Elmer story, right?  By David McKee? If you don't, take a listen:

Elmer is such a great story, and one of my young students colored a VERY colorful elephant after she listened to Elmer.

This little elephant alone is enough to run over and pick up our new E craft packet! 

But let's check out the other crafts, too.  I want to show you our fun little mailbox that is so good for pretend playing with Envelopes.

Learning more about mail and envelopes is a perfect study for Letter E.  And so I also include our booklist for letter E, which has some fabulous suggestions for kids to learn more about mail.

Also included in our Craft packet is a marvelous Egg craft that involves crushing eggshells.  Small children love the tactile experience of feeling eggshells crunch under their hands.  If desired, you can even paint the shells before you crunch them, like we did below:

But regardless, the end result is this adorable little spring chick:

Lastly, our Elf Craft Sheet is fabulous.  Here's the colored version:

But we love it best when the children get to personalize their little elves, and color them up on their own. 

Learn more about this fabulous collection of crafts for E (the short sound), here in our store.