October 7, 2010

Monsters! Monster Shapes


We're getting a lot of mileage out of our googly eyes this week. To make these cute (and oh so educational) shape monsters, all we needed was craft foam shapes, googly eyes, and lots and lots of glue.


A is never happier than when she's squeezing glue out onto something in copious amounts. Googly eyes were just a nice bonus.


With this one little activity we worked on our fine motor control, discussed the shapes and colors of the monsters, counted each of their eyes and talked about which eyes were bigger and smaller. Not bad for 50 cents worth of craft materials!


Go Away, Big Green Monster! by Ed Emberley

Go Away, Big Green Monster!The Emberleys have a whole series of monster books out, but this was the one I could get my hands on. I'm so glad I did! Ingenious die cutting on each page makes this book such fun to read. As you turn each page a monster slowly appears, revealing his big yellow eyes and sharp white teeth through the die cuts on the page. Half way through the book you yell "You don't scare me!" and the subsequent pages hide each of the features until he's disappeared.

I fell in love with The Very Hungry Caterpillar at age 4 because of the die cuts in the book. I can only imagine how much I would have loved this one. My girls certainly do!

I'm linking up to:
- Play Academy @ Nurture Store
- Show & Tell @ ABC & 123
- Tot Tuesday @ My Delicious Ambiguity

20 comments:

  1. Love this idea! Have lots of google eyes that I just picked up at the dollar store! (who knew they carried them??) Thanks for sharing! Kerri

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  2. A bag of google eyes goes a long way. The first time I got them out for my toddler to craft with, he didn't want to do any crafting. He just wanted to play with all the eyes!

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  3. Googly eyes are a big hit in our house too, and my kids LOVE that book!

    I love your shape monsters - very cute idea!

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  4. Awesome, makes me want to animate them...would be easy to make into finger puppets too.

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  5. What darling little creatures!!! Go Away Big Green M is one of my kiddo's favorite books. :):)

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  6. Cute would be an understatement for those - they are adorable!

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  7. Very creative,cute,and a great way to learn shapes. Thank you for sharing.

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  8. Okay! Seriously! Googly EYES are my all time favorite. How can you ever get enough???
    Love the monsters!!!

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  9. Great idea! I had my kids (I provide at home daycare) do this activity today. They all loved it! I didn't have any craft foam so we just used construction paper and then I glued all the shapes and legs to cardboard. I think I'll add some popsicle sticks and make them all puppets for another activity : )

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  10. I'd love to share this on my blog next week. Would it be ok to use your picture of the shapes?

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  11. Love it - those shape monsters are super cute and very easy. Great craft to go with a great book.

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  12. What a great idea! I have a huge ziploc of google eyes and the monster book too. I was planning a shapes theme this week and this will be perfect! Thanks for sharing!

    Visiting you from ABC and 123!

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  13. Cute! We are going to be doing monster stuff later in the month. I'll have to keep this in mind.

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  14. Thank you so much for sharing this with us at the Play Academy! Just our kind of thing: crafty, simple, cute and with lots of learning sneaked in to. :)

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  15. I love that book, our librarian reads it every year! Great craft too, mine is the same way just loves to squirt out glue!

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  16. We just finished this craft mere minutes ago and wanted to tell you thank you! They were a hit!

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