Monster Craft

My daughter is very into monsters lately, as long as they are cute and friendly! Last year at her day care she made a monster with candy corn teeth (similar to this one from Crafty Morning), but I didn't save it long because of the candy. So when I found these craft candy corn pieces at Hobby Lobby, I thought we could make another monster with them and be able to save it with the rest of our Halloween decorations.

She and a friend made their own monsters. I asked what color they wanted for the body, horns, arms and feet and cut everything free-hand from construction paper. They glued on all the pieces. I set out a bunch of wiggle eyes for them to choose from, as well.

Then I put dots of glue inside the mouth for the kids to place the fake candy corn.

I love how they turned out!

Monsters, Skeletons and Witches, Oh My!

MONSTERS
Here's a cute hand print monster I'm sure you've seen before. I used green paint on the palm and black paint on the fingers. (I didn't paint the thumb at all.)  After the kids made their print, I painted a little green neck.

When it was dry, I cut them out (leaving some space around the neck to add the bolts) and the kids added wiggle eyes and used Sharpies to draw the rest of the face and some scars and stitches.

Then I painted some gray bolts and cut around those when they were dry. This could definitely be done at the same time as the hand print. I don't know why I waited until the end. Also, for the girl monsters, and mine, I painted a white zigzag on the hair.

They turned out really cute!

I printed out a sign that said, "My Little Monsters" and hung them on my door.

SKELETONS
This one isn't a craft, but it's a fun thing you can do in the classroom. I brought in a skeleton, named Mr. Bones, and taped him to our bathroom door.

I told the kids he was there to make sure they weren't being silly. Well, when the kids are out of the room or sleeping at nap time, I change him up a bit, so he's the one being silly.

They just love it! Most of them know it's me (I think), but they still get a kick out of seeing Mr. Bones being silly. Tomorrow I need to find a costume to put on him!
WITCHES
I shared this craft last year, but they are so stinkin' cute, I wanted to share a picture of how they turned out this year.

To find out how we made these witch legs, click here!

Frankenstein's Monster Craft

I got this next idea from A Cupcake for the Teacher. First I showed the kids some pictures of Dr. Frankenstein and his monster and told them briefly about it. Then they did the craft. I cut out some green rectangles with rounded corners and the kids drew faces on them. I reminded them to leave room at the top for hair.

I also cut green strips and folded them accordion-style. Those were the legs. The kids glued them to the bottom of the rectangle and then attached black shoes to the ends.

I even cut out little black rectangles for the eyebrows!

For the hair, the kids just used black paint. Some of them drew in the hair first, others didn't.

I didn't have any gray construction paper for the bolts, so I used silver glitter. It was all I could think of, but I like the way it turned out. And the kids also used a red marker to make stitches. (I wanted to use red puffy paint, but I couldn't find any at my center.)

The expressions on these monsters are awesome!

They are hanging from our ceiling with our paper plate ghosts!

Now are you ready for a super old photo? I made a huge Frankenstein monster with my very first Pre-K class. I hung it up so it looked like it was walking out of our wall, stepping over the gravestone of Dr. Frankenstein. Here is my scanned-in photo. Yes, scanned.

I had the kids pose with a frightened face. It was so cute! I never planned on it getting this big. It all started with just the monster's head, made from newspaper, stuffed, and painted green. (I got the idea from some website, but it was many, many years ago and I can't find it now.) The kids all helped with the face.

(Oh, how I wish I had a digital camera all those years ago!) After we made the head I thought we just had to give him a body. So using the same technique as the head, I stapled more newspapers together into the shape of a jacket and pant leg, stuffed them with more newspaper, and let the kids paint them. They even splattered red paint on the jacket so it looked like blood! I only made one leg because the other would be covered up by the gravestone. The shoe is made out of a box. And everything is held up with string hanging from the ceiling! Man, what a lot of work that was!

But it gave me some great memories!



HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Glitter-Painted Monsters

I wasn't planning on sharing our last monster art with you because it was just painting. It doesn't need any explaining at all. But they turned out so cute, I decided to show them after all. We painted with glitter paint.

We've used glitter watercolors for a couple years now, but this glitter paint is new to the center. You'd normally not put the words glitter and monster together, but it just added a little somethin'. I told the kids they could paint whatever they wanted, but most of them wanted to stick with the monster theme. They were very creative!

As I was holding one up, I noticed that when light was behind it, it was very pretty. So I decided to turn them into suncatchers and hang them on the window.

Ignore our lovely view.
It doesn't really show it in that picture, but the paint is extra bright and shiny. And this was taken on a cloudy day. Can't wait to see it with the sun shining in.

And now, for your viewing pleasure, the SWAMP MONSTER!

That's my husband. He's in the army and had the perfect "costume" for this. Behind our center we have a nice stream. We often take the kids on walks there to look for the swamp monster. We had only been dating one month when he pulled out this suit and said it would make a great swamp monster. (That's when I knew he was a keeper!) It was great to finally have a picture to show the kids. They know it's not real but love it anyway. Whenever we go on walks, they always ask if we can go by the stream to look for the swamp monster!

To this day he is still giving me ideas for my class, always taking an interest in what I do. Thanks, honey!

Monster Cups

I got this next idea from Honey Bee Books. As soon as I saw it, I thought, "We could make monsters that way!" So I put out styrofoam cups, pipe cleaners, eye stickers, markers, and leftover dyed pasta that I stuck on glue dots.

And the kids did whatever they wanted with the supplies to make their own monsters.

I loved how easy it was for them to do.

So simple. So fun.

Push-Paint Monsters

This was a fun and easy art project. I'm sure you've all done this before. You start with a big sheet of white paper, fold it in half, and open it up again. Have several paint colors available for the kids. We used spoons to scoop a blob of paint and drop it on the paper.

Try to keep the paint close to the crease and away from the edges of the paper. Then fold the paper again and push the paint all around. I knew I wanted to cut these out, so the kids had to make sure all their blobs of paint got connected. If they opened the paper up and noticed "floating blobs" they just closed the paper and pushed some more. When everything is connected, it will look like, well, anything. But in our case, it looked like a monster!

Then I put out glue and wiggle eyes and the kids could add those anywhere on the paint.

Once dry, I cut them out and taped them onto black paper. It made the paint color "pop."

Then I cut them out again, leaving a nice black edging, and hung them on the wall.

It's a very bright display!

Scrap-Paper Monsters

So today I had to throw together a quick art project. We were supposed to have a Trike-a-thon today, therefore I didn't plan anything. But it was way too hot for kids to be biking around the parking lot for charity, so it was postponed. I ended up putting our box of construction paper scraps on the table, along with some scissors, tape and markers. The kids went to town making monsters.

I had recently gone through my lesson plan folders and threw a bunch of old and leftover projects into the box, so we had some parrots and chimp faces in there that the kids could use.

Please excuse the photos. My camera battery was very low so I wasn't taking 10 shots of everything trying to get the perfect picture. It was actually kind of nice at the time, but now I'm left with very few choices.

This next one is so cute.

I mean scary. After all, it is a monster.
And the girl who made this next one put so much time into it. She kept coming back to the art table throughout the morning, adding more pieces each time.

So there you have it. A last-minute art project that turned out to be one of my (and the kids') favorite.