It's amazing the level of humiliation one is willing to take on when hanging out with a three year old (just running into our neighbors while we all don monster hats). Mostly though, it's just fun to follow their lead and act like a kid with my kids.
One of Everett's favorite books, which he has memorized, is Monster Party, so one day he said, "Let's be monsters for school!" Throughout the week, we made monster hats, monster snacks, pet monsters, monster slime, read a lot of monster books, and had a monster party of our very own.
Everett and I decided that the best children's books out there as a collection have got to be monster books. There are so many good ones. Every time I plan a topic for "school," I research books, and then check out an obscene amount from the library. Matt makes fun of me for it, and even this time, the librarian made fun of me for how many monster books I had reserved. Some books we check out are good, and some are really not, so I keep lists on here of the ones that Everett and Cambria have enjoyed. We read the good ones over and over until we have to take them back. As a collection, the monster books are the ones we have enjoyed the most. Something about a silly make believe topic like monsters encourages writers to be creative and funny in ways that are enjoyable for both kids and adults.
Books we enjoyed:
- Monster Party
- Go Away Big Green Monster!
- Monster Munch
- Monsters Love Colors
- Monster Baby
- There's a Monster at the End of this Book
- Another Monster at the End of this Book
- Your Pal Mo Willems Presents Leonardo the Terrible Monster
- I Want a Monster!
- My Monster Mama Loves Me So
- There's a Monster in Your Book
- The Monster Next Door
- Jeremy Draws a Monster
- The Monster Returns
- Yuck! That's Not a Monster
- Mrs. Muffly's Monster
- Monster Day at Work
- Quit Calling me a Monster!
- Marilyn's Monster
- I Will Chomp You!
***
First, we read Monster Party, and we talked about what we wanted to eat at the party. Everett chose cheeseburgers, so we added them to our grocery list.
Then, we had to make our monster masks for the party. We read Go Away Big Green Monster! and Monster Munch, which are both about shapes, and we discussed what shapes he wanted on the monster masks. Then, we read Monsters Love Colors, and we discussed what colors Everett wanted to use for the masks. Everett loves to cut paper, so he chose colors and cut a lot of paper to make our monster hats. We were going for cute, not scary monsters, but the masks Everett made for Cambria and him are kind of terrifying, although I pretended they weren't. I made a monster hat for myself as an example. Everett was in charge of masks for himself, Cambria, Daddy, and our dog, Aspen. He did almost all of the cutting himself, designed what he wanted them to look like, and I helped with the gluing. It took a couple of days to make all the masks.
We made mud and worms for monster snacks. Everett smashed oreos, mixed it with pudding to create the mud, and then added gummy worms.
Once we had everything ready, we were ready to put on our masks and have our monster party. Cambria was so excited to wear the "hat" that Everett made for her.
Everett decided to draw a monster on each side of the paper to make his a two-headed monster. Then, he told me a story about it, and I wrote it down for him.
Cambria was proud of her monster, too.
Finally, we made green monster slime for "science," following this recipe.
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