Elmer!

This is a simple and fun small world activity based on the classic Elmer stories written by David Mckee. My two have enjoyed Elmer stories since they were very small and continue to do so. The stories are particularly great at teaching to celebrate diversity and individuality. My two toddlers love small world play and so combining Elmer into our small world play was a big hit!

Set Up

I used some green homemade play dough but you could of course use shop bought. I used some wooden safari animals that we have at home. Then using dot stickers I covered one of our plastic elephants to make him look like Elmer. The trees were toilet rolls with tissue paper in.

The girls needed no invitation and got stuck straight into this Elmer small world activity. M was acting out various story lines from the Elmer stories whereas F was seemingly playing more randomly. As we had recently been using play dough to practice cutlery skills F helped herself to some cutlery and got chopping! After a while F began joining in with M’s story lines and enjoyed splashing the animals in the “water”.

I was so impressed how well the girls played together and how they used their imaginations. M created a birthday cake for Elmer using the wood slices sandwiched with the play dough! I kept this activity out for the girls all week, just wrapping up the play dough each day as they kept coming back to it and playing with it again and again. A simple small world idea based on the Elmer stories that helps toddlers and older children to act out and recreate the classic stories. Definitely one we will try again. So much fun!