Adventures in Homeschooling: I Love My Monsters!

Okay, I know, I know, before you say anything. My kids are not monsters, but it is fun to pretend. The kiddos love to be monsters one month out of the school year. This month is monstrously fun in our classroom. Carson Dellosa has the cutest little monsters ever. I got the multiplication monsters and the reading monsters bulletin board sets last year. This year, I converted the monster name tags into calendar cards and got the peek-around monsters to add to our fun theme.

I love cute, colorful, decorative accents for the classroom. However, I believe in using these accents for teaching opportunities. Joy is just beginning simple multiplication concepts (i.e. multiplying times 0 and 1) while Joshua is beginning more difficult multiplication families. The mulitplication monsters are a great teaching tool. The reading monsters picture different monsters reading in bed, at school, for fun, etc . . . Although they don't teach anything specifically, we are going to turn each monster into a word family for our special sounds. One monster will feature -ck in duck words, one monster will feature ch- in church words, etc . . . The peek-arounds were one of my favorite additions this year. I laminated large sheets of black construction paper for the monsters to peek around. Each adorable monster in my class will choose their favorite book, I'll make a color copy of the cover of the book and we'll display our favorite books around the room. The other peek-around monsters will hold our best work this month and display it on the wall.

We'll use our regular show-and-tell time this month to allow the students to share their favorite book that is displayed on the wall and tell what they like about it. It is a fun and easy way for my little monsters to practice oral book reports and oral reading. Each student will talk about their book and read it to the class (well, Bethany and Brittany might need some help with the reading part).