Monsters!

Today I am linking up with Deanna for her wonderful Let's Talk About Books Linky. Thank you, Deanna, for hosting!

We had so much fun with monsters last week that I wanted to share some things that we did.

These first books are some oldies but goodies.  They're simple stories and great for letting the children retell by acting out the stories. I choose a few different children each time we read the story. They go to their "places," and they act out the story as I read it.  These stories also great for reminding the children that monsters are silly and fun, not real and scary!

The children also loved Glad Monster, Sad Monster.

This book by Ed Emberly is all about feelings. It's great for vocabulary, and for discussions or turn and talks  about why you sometimes feel a certain way and have different moods.

Glad Monster

 Silly Monster

The book has a little mask to go with each monster.

I had my children create their own monsters around the eyeballs on this paper.  Last year I bought a roll of eyeball stickers (because OF COURSE I did...), and that has been one of my best purchases.  I used to use googly eyes for projects, but they never really stuck on.  Somebody's always fell off and projects were missing an eye here or there. It was sad.  These little stickers are great.  

I made papers ahead of time for the children to create monsters around.  The children had a ball creating their monster during an independent center, and then they wrote a story about their monsters later in the day.

This little guy has come SUCH a long way!

My friend across the hall wanted to do this activity, and I started to put eyeballs on papers for her, when I realized that I could make one paper and COPY it.  (Don't you just want to say, "duh!" here...) Why didn't I think of that when I was making mine? Anyway, that's exactly what I did for her, and HERE are the papers if you would like some of your own.
I made two versions- depending on your mood- two or three monsters... hmmmm?!

My friend Dan (Rocking Dan Teacher Man) has a great descriptive song about monsters!  He has so many great songs that the kids just love!

We also had fun with math addition and subtraction word problems using different size googly eyes. I did this with a small group during our math lesson.  They loved using the eyes as counters to figure out our monster word problems.

 Here is a picture from the beginning of the year when I used the googly eyes for counting on this great monster freebie called Monster Mash from Rowdy in Room 300.

I wrote a post HERE  ALLLLL about monsters with lots of TPT monster freebies if you would like some more fun activities to go with this theme.

I can't wait to see what other fun books everyone is sharing this week!
Thanks for stopping by! Don't forget to link up one of your favorite books with Deanna.