Gather children in discussion area

Explain that elephants must eat a lot, so they spend most of their day look for food.  List student answers on board.

1. What do you think elephants eat?

2. How much do you think an elephant eats?

Plants, pumpkins (since zoos often feed elephants pumpkins around Halloween), fruit.  Some students may not understand that elephants are herbivores.

Introduce the large grocery bag and tell students that it is full of elephant snacks. Have students pull out an item from bag and place it inside the circle.

1.What is it?

Students identify what they pulled from the bag.

With their elephant puppets, have children explore their lunch bags filled with elephant snacks.  Encourage students to pick up food, smell it, and identify it without looking.  Then, they can eat the snack. 

1. How does the food feel?

2. How does it smell?

3. What do you think it is?

4. What does it taste like?

Students will likely peek at their snacks to identify it.  Vegetables that have a distinct smell like celery may be easily identified by smell.

Encourage students to compare their first answer on the board to the items in the circle.  Facilitate a discussion.

1. How do the items written on the board compare to the food in the circle?

Students who did not understand that elephants are herbivores may wonder why there are only plants in the middle of the circle.

Encourage students to realize that all the items in the centre are plants.  Introduce the term herbivore and explain in it terms of being a vegetarian.

1. How are the items all the same?

2. Do you know a vegetarian?

3. What do you think being a vegetarian is?

4. Do you know what a herbivore is?

Students will begin to under what a herbivore is and that elephants are herbivores.

Explain that elephants touch and smell food and recognize what it is without seeing it.

1. Do you know how elephants find food?

2. How do they know what it is?

Students will most likely answer smell using trunk, looking at it, and grabbing it.  Students might not understand how elephants identify food without looking at it, because most humans identify food by looking at it.

Take student outside to identify what elephants would eat in an outdoor setting

1. What is that?

2. Would an elephant eat that?

Students will identify items they saw in class, such as leaves and bark.  Students might not identify roots if they were not shown in class.

When students return to class, have students independently draw or cut from magazine things that elephants might eat.

1. Think about what we saw in the grocery bags.

2. Think about what we saw outside.

Students will cut out plants, trees, vegetables, fruit, nuts, etc.