Learn French Colours With Elmer
Exploitation de l’album Les couleurs d’Elmer
Themes: colours
What better way to learn French colours than with the well-loved multi-coloured elephant Elmer! Your child is likely to have already encountered Elmer in English and be familiar with the character. In this book of the popular series, the patchwork elephant discovers the different colours.
Worksheets & crafts - Did you know that Elmer has his own website at Elmer.co.uk? Yes, indeed! You will find a selection of worksheets and craft ideas to explore here with your child. The worksheets are in English, however they are adaptable to French, particularly the maze, colouring in sheets and the dice game. The elephant mask and milk jug elephant are easy enough projects even for very little ones with a bit of help! Early Years teacher Anna over at The Imagination Tree has step by step instructions accompanied by photos to help you along the way with your milk jug elephant.
Selection of worksheets - The French website L’ecole d’Alara has numerous activities based around Elmer incorporating different skills. In this worksheet, your child matches the patterned elephants by cutting and pasting. This worksheet focuses on letter recognition, your child replicates the model and spells the word “Elmer” by cutting and pasting letters in the correct positions. Another focuses on size and visual discrimination, organising the elephants from largest to smallest.
Arts & crafts - Kate from Crafts on Sea presents a round up of ten colourful Elmer themed arts & crafts activities for you to try with your child. You could try a brightly coloured Elmer inspired ornament, a sponge painted patchwork Elmer or even a sun catcher!
Activities & craft ideas - Over at The Story Snug you’ll find more activity ideas and crafts featuring Elmer. I particularly like the patchwork Lego/Duplo board. For a challenge, see if your child can make sure that no two of the same colours touch each other - it may be trickier than it appears! If you enjoy using technology with your child and have an iPad or iPhone, you could try Elmer’s Photo Patchwork app - and it’s available in French, too. Use the camera to take pictures and decorate your elephant with different colours, patterns and textures.
Song - Un Éléphant Qui Se Balançait is a super fun and rather silly song about an elephant swinging on a spider’s web! It’s so much fun that another elephant joins in. The song continues counting upwards until there are too many and they all fall down. In Les Petits Tigres classes we do a slightly different version of this starting with 5 elephants, and one by one they fall down. It’s a lot of fun to dance like an elephant, swinging your arm like a trunk and then - badaboum! - fall down! A great way to learn french colours with Elmer!