E is for Elephant Fun

When I asked the child for an E word this week she said, "Who is making us do this, Mom?" he he he...
"It's just for fun," I said. And then she proved me wrong. Last week I said I think she just looks around and says the first thing she sees that starts with that letter. Well for E she thought about it and said, "Elephant." Needless to say there weren't any elephants around. So I asked her which elephant she was thinking of. We actually have lots of elephants at our house, because I happen to love elephants. They are my favorite animal. A couple of years ago I was so happy to get to ride an elephant in a natural environment when we visited Bali. I have collected elephant pictures, books, figurines, and stuffed animals. So she caught me off guard, again - it is her specialty - when she said she wanted me to take a picture of the Elephant from Monkey Dunk.

In case you are not familiar, Monkey dunk is a Milton Bradley game from Hasbro. It is sort of a take off from tiddlywinks. Each player is given four plastic monkeys (yellow, red, green, or purple).

These monkeys jump when you push on their backside. It is a little tricky for small fingers, but with a little hand over hand and encouragement I got the four year old twins jumping monkeys in no time.

The object is to jump your monkeys into the swimming hole. The elephant guards one of the swimming holes, and also acts as a timer for the game. When you push the bottom of the elephant in it sets a spring that slowly unwinds and then...POPS! When the elephant pops some of the monkeys jump again. Each player counts how many of his monkeys end up in the swimming hole and takes a banana token for each swimming monkey.

The bonus of getting this game out to take photos of the Elephant is that the kids are all now happily playing monkey dunk while I write the post. It's a super fun win,win, win.

To see other Excellent Excerpts on E click here.

Disclaimer: in case the spontaneous nature of this post wasn't clear enough...no compensation (except laughter and fun times) was provided by Hasbro for this advertisement. Good deal for them, no?