Do you love or hate the elf on the shelf game?
We didn’t participate this year because my kids are still too young and we haven’t quite decided how much we are going to push the whole Santa thing, but I did spot these adorable Elf Templates on Pinterest and thought they’d make a great poster.
Let’s Get Started!
What You Need:
- Elf Yourself Template (Here’s the one I used from Teachers Pay Teachers (free))
- Green Cardstock
- Glue
- Scissors
- Poster board
- Pictures of kids
What You Do:
Take pictures of your kids about two feet away. Here’s one of the faces we used for the Elf Poster. I love getting my pictures processed at Walgreens because they are fairly priced and QUICK!
Print the Elf Template onto green card stock. You could also print it onto white card stock if you’d like to color it yourself or have the kids color it. Personally, the green I used (kind of a hunter green) ended up being too dark, so I would go with something lighter than you see in my picture.
After cutting out the elf outfit, glue or tape your child’s head behind the elf suit. I cut up along the side of the head so the girls’ hair would be in front of the elf suit.
Also, if you leave a little bit of the shirt/shoulders in the picture when you cut out the head, it seems to sit better in the elf outfit.
You could line all your elves up like this, but I wanted to write their names under each elf, so we spread ours out a little bit more. We’ve been working on name recognition, and this would be a great project to reinforce that. Instead of gluing the elves directly to the poster, you could attach them to those Velcro Coins
As for us, we went the easy route, gluing the elves directly to the poster. We did look at each name though and say it out loud in order to practice. Along the the outside edge, I wrote “Our Elves are Too Cute to Put on a Shelf! Wouldn’t You Agree?” Of course, it was a hit with kids and parents alike!
To take the learning a bit further, you could read a few elf books like The Littlest Elf
