Elephant Appreciation Day is September 22nd and you can celebrate it in your classroom! It’s a great opportunity to teach about elephants and conservation. It’s also a great time to read some fantastic elephant books!! I love any excuse to study animals. The students are always so engaged and eager to learn. Let’s have some more of that!
In this post you’ll find a list of elephant related theme books, some conservation information, links to elephant videos, virtual field trip information, and links to a resource for studying elephants and writing a research report.
Elephant Books
First, you’ll need some good books to read in your classroom for Elephant Appreciation Day! Here is a collection of non-fiction and fiction animal books for elementary students. I haven’t read all of them, so make sure to review them well on Amazon or Good Reads to make sure they are a good fit for your grade level. There are some serious books here, inspirational ones, and some are just plain silly!
Virtual Field Trip
Next, why not take your class to visit the elephants! The Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee offers free virtual field trips. They are 25 minutes and they have a calendar so you can sign up for a time that works for your class. Click here to find out more information.
Elephant Conservation
It breaks my heart that these animals are still suffering. You can read about the work to stop the ivory trade here at the WWF page.
A fun way that we can help is through a cute elephant bracelet — ivory free of course! Wildlife Collections works with Save the Elephants and donates a small part of their proceeds. It also helps build awareness and looks cute! I have a few sea turtle ones (they were on my Christmas list!) and I need to add elephants!
The African Savanna Elephant is endangered and the numbers are decreasing. The African Forest Elephant is critically endangered and the numbers are decreasing. The Asian Elephant is endangered and the numbers are decreasing. You can read more about the statistics, threats, and what is being done at the IUCN Red List here.
Watch some adorable elephant videos
Your students will love watching these cute videos of elephants. I put together a few links for some videos that you could show to your class on Elephant Appreciation Day. You can print it for the students to scan with an internet connected portable device. You can download the printable copy here. I’ll also include the links so you can just show it to the whole class.
- Baby elephant taking her first bath
- Elephants 101
- An elephant sanctuary in Thailand
- Learn about elephants
Learn about Elephants
Finally, have your students research about elephants! It’s a great way to get in some solid ELA time on Elephant Appreciation Day!
Are you looking for more information about elephants? Whether it’s Elephant Appreciation Day or just a regular old Wednesday 🙂 your students will enjoy learning about elephants. They are one of the animals that I write about in my African Animal Research Pages.
A few reviews from other teachers:
This is a great resource for animal research! I used this with my second graders when we did animal research. The passages were easy for them to read on their own and the notes page was easy for them to understand and locate information in the passages.
Julie (teacher review on TPT)
This has been SOOO helpful for our first research project for these first graders. Tons of information clearly laid out. Thanks!
Chelsie (teacher review on TPT)
This is one of my favorite resources to use with my kiddos! They love making their own reports and addressing the classroom. The parents love it too!
Tammy (teacher review on TPT)
You can also get just the elephant pages. This is great for a quick research activity. Just print the elephant information page, the graphic organizer, and the writing pages and hand it out. Print & go!
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