Monstrous Learning!
“People adore monsters. They fill their songs and stories with them. They define themselves in relation to them.” - Jim Butcher, Ghost Story
Get your copy of Hacking Digital Learning, The 30 Goals Challenge, or Learning to Go. Ask me about training your teachers, ShellyTerrell@gmail.com!
Monsters make learning fun and approachable, because they don't have to look a certain way. Children must use their imagination when learning with monsters. Below are some free resources, web tools, apps, and activities that include monsters.
Resources
- Teach Your Monster to Read is a site that helps kids learn phonics, spelling, and vocabulary through various monster games.
- Draw my monster – Students draw monsters, then are put in pairs. Student A must describe his monster to Student B. Student B draws the monster.
- Animate student monsters with Blabberize or Chatterpix Kids iOS app.
- Monster stories – Use tools like EduBuncee, Storybird, Toon Doo, or Book Creator to create multimedia stories with the monsters.
- My kids love creating monsters with Learn English Kids, because the monsters dance and sing after they are created. Find tons of monster handouts and animated stories with games.
- Monster planet – Have learners create the planet their monsters came from with play dough.
- Class Dojo uses monsters to help children learn about mindfulness and also helps teachers with parent communication.
- One of my favorite books to read to kids about monsters is The Gruffalo by Julia Donaldson. Find fun activities, songs, handouts, games and more that accompany this book.
- Children can learn to code! My students love Code the Yeti and Tynker. No registration required for many projects and easy for beginners.
- Find a few book ideas here such as Where the Wild Things Are and The Gruffalo.
- Check out the spellbook template on Boggles World.
- Students can create magic potions or spells and learn science and math. Find the magic potion pair activity I created here. Find Halloween related cooking recipes here for potions, slime, fake blood, and more.
- Make a horror flick and add special effects these free Android and IOS apps like Quo Movie FX, Creature FX, and Action Movie FX.
- Draw My Monster, Alien, or Costume- Students can get into pairs, one describes a costume or monster that the other student draws. Try this as a web or mobile activity with Educreations or Let’s Learn How to Draw Monsters.