Present a picture of an elephant and ask the children if they have ever seen an elephant, and where that was, such as the zoo or the circus. Read a few simple facts about elephants, such as where they live, what they eat and how they use their trunks. Ask the children what their favorite elephant stories are and have a few story books available to read about elephants.
Give each child a picture of an elephant to color, but give them only black and white finger paints. Ask them to mix the paints, so each child will end up with gray paint for the elephant. They can then finger paint the picture and use the white and black to color in details such as tusks and eyes.
Using gray paper, give each child two oval cutouts for the elephant's body and two elephant-ear shaped cutouts, along with a gray pipe cleaner for a trunk, small gray string for a tail, two clothes pegs and two glue-on eyes. Let the children each create an elephant by gluing an ear and eye on each oval, and the pipe cleaner and yarn on opposite ends of the oval for the trunk and tail. Then glue the two oval shapes together so the pipe cleaner and yarn are enclosed and the ears and eyes are on the outsides. Attach the clothes pegs to the bottom of the elephant for the legs, and paint them with gray paint.
Introduce the letters in the word "elephant" by writing the word on a large piece of paper and seeing if the children can identify each letter. Write the word on a piece of paper on top of a magnetic board with magnet letters. See if the children can find each magnet letter to spell "elephant." Finally, give them a picture of an elephant with the word written and lots of space underneath the word. Ask them to copy the "elephant" to see if they can write the whole word.