Painted elephants to celebrate Elmer Day

My children really enjoy the stories of Elmer the Elephant. Elmer the Patchwork Elephant is a children’s picture book series by British author David McKee. We’ve amassed quite a collection of Elmer books and were delighted to discover that the first Elmer Day will be held on May 28th 2016.

In case you haven’t seen a picture of Elmer before, he is an elephant who has a colourful body, with yellow, orange, red, pink, purple, blue, green, black and white arranged as a patchwork pattern. He is a very cheerful elephant who loves practical jokes and always stands out from the crowds.

Our local library is holding an Elmer Day event which we unfortunately can’t attend so instead we had a fun Elmer craft session at home. I found an Elephant Ceramic Coin Bank which I knew would be perfect for decorating as Elmer.

We used:
Elephant Ceramic Coin Banks from Baker Ross
Ceramic paints from Baker Ross
Old newspaper and paint brushes

I covered the table in newspaper then let the children loose with the ceramic paints. The paint was quite runny so they soon learned to only take a little bit.

They both wanted to create their own Elmer’s so added small splashes of paint to create a patchwork effect. They took their time over these, leaving them to dry before adding more colour.

When they had finished I left them to dry before baking them in the oven. Unfortunately I left the plastic stopper in them which melted in the oven so these are decorative rather than useful!