monster mayhem

many small tots are afraid of monsters...this project might be just the ticket to help make monsters a little less scary.  it's also a great opportunity to talk to kids about reality vs. make believe.  and it's just downright fun.
to begin,  i collected several books about monsters that weren't so scary and read them to the kids before starting our monster craft:

all of these books are favorites in our house.  especially Leonardo the Terrible Monster by Mo Willems, it's such a cute story!  And of course Max loves Where the Wild Things Are!
After we read the stories (some of them more than once), I collected our monster making materials.

we used pieces of colored foam (large and small), puff balls, eyeballs, pipe cleaners (we actually ended up ditching these because they were tricky to glue down), scissors, rainbow colored sharpies, tacky glue, and feathers.  the beauty of this particular project though is that you don't need these exact materials.  you can create monsters out of anything you have on hand...construction paper, crayons, empty boxes, empty toilet paper rolls, recycled materials, and the list goes on.  anything goes with monster mayhem!

so i threw all of these materials out on the table and told them to make their own monsters...and encouraged them to be as creative as they could...and they were creative indeed!  that's it, just one direction:  make a monster.

max took a few minutes to think about his monster plans before starting the project.

ella jumped right in and started cutting out body parts for her monster.

sam hardly spoke at all while working on his monster...he was so intent!  and he did not want any help or ideas from anyone.  which is just how it should be when letting the creative juices flow.

monster body

then add a monster head...and other various monster body parts and eyeballs.

and the end result is monster mayhem!

(l-r: ella, sam & max)