Indian Elephant / Teachers' Notes
Take a closer look at your supermarket milk and fabric conditioner cartons – oh yes, they have turned into elephants. Be careful: some of them won’t convert. You need the ones where the trunk (handle) has a flat surface behind it – not a corner type surface. The labels all come off pretty easily.
Younger children may need help with the cutting out but older and more able children can easily do this themselves.
Cut the carton roughly in half, pinching the corner to get purchase for the first cut and trim the top half along its base where the handle stops.
Stand the bottle, handle facing you. That is the elephant ‘face’. It’s best to mark the cutting lines for legs, as shown, on your first attempt. At the back, don’t forget to cut out a tail – long or short, you decide.
Cut carefully around to make all the legs & tail. You can make alterations to the leg length at this stage.
Snip off the handle (trunk) to desired length. Remember the Elephant’s Child and err on the side of caution making your legs and trunk too long to start with. You can always make them shorter afterwards.
There you are, a glorious herd of elephants, all shapes and sizes. Tiny cartons make lovely little baby elephants!
You can either decorate directly onto the plastic carton or paint it first with acrylic paint. Let it DRY completely before decorating with sequins, bits of haberdashery, jewels, tissue paper, etc. all stuck on with PVA. Glue guns can be used for the heavier bits. The more elaborate, the better. Don’t forget to add some eyes and maybe some ears.
This will release a great spurt of creativity. The possibilities are endless. Take a look at The Elephant and the Bad Baby which is illustrated by Raymond Briggs (The Snowman etc) and is a gorgeous book with younger kids in mind - although I enjoyed it too! Of course, there's Elmer the handy ubiquitous elephant, but we fancied a change.
You will get completely carried away – we changed our fabric conditioner brand in order to make an elephant from the new cartons. Put your elephants on parade. See More Ideas for more ways to finish them off.
Colour in the Indian Elephant Dude featured below from our collection of Dude Colouring Worskheets.
Please post your comments on this project or any others on our blog http://curriculart.wordpress.com/
Aims, Objectives & Outcomes
- Provide greater understanding of working in three dimensions
- Help with scissor control and hand/eye co-ordination
- Improve gluing and sticking-down skills
- Encourage improvisation and experimentation with materials
- Improve design skills
- Describe how features might be changed
