Time: 10-15 minutes

Materials

• Go Away Big Green Monster! by Ed Emberley; Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak; Theres a Monster Under My Bed by James Howe; Everything I Know About Monsters by Tom Litchenheld; or other descriptive books about monsters
• Paper plates, construction paper, yarn, markers, and glue
• Note cards

Set up

• Copy the text of the book onto note cards.
• Set out paper, markers, and glue so that children can easily share. (Make sure that a rainbow of colors is available for children to use.)

Directions

• Read aloud a monster description from the note cards so that children cannot see the books or illustrations.
• Distribute paper plates to the children and tell them to create their own imaginary monster mask based on a real description from a book. (If you have several volunteers, you may want to divide the children into groups and have each group design a mask based on a different description read by the volunteer.)
• Give children about 10 minutes to design their masks.
• Have them parade around to show off their masks and their best monster growls.