Monster Guided Drawing and Monster Book Freebies!



Today I am going to share with a very simple Halloween monster guided drawing lesson, and a cute little lift the flap book that kids could make for their monsters to "live in!"  I actually did the guided drawing portion of this lesson with my class last year and it was a HUGE hit!  I'm sure that this was because of the popularity of the theme and because the pictures were so simple to draw that the entire class felt successful!




Also, lately, I have been "itching" to create a lift the flap book with a "monster behind the door" type of theme, so I decided that I would try it with my guided drawing monster project and share it with you here today, just in time for Halloween!




It's perfect for TKers, too. Guided drawing is a little lost on them, but I just LOVE their cute monster drawings they come up with on their own!




Above, you see what the book looks like with the flaps closed.  Notice how he labeled the flap with his name!  The last flap, though, is supposed to be a window curtain, and I laminated it for strength because part of it is made with tissue paper!  So they couldn't write on the laminated section.  Of course, you don't have to make your window quite so "fancy."  You could make the window with plain old card stock or construction paper, and it would turn out fine.  I just went a little crazy with the creativity, that's all!







Once I got started putting on the flaps, I realized that the children would probably REALLY like a piece of felt for both the bed cover and the curtains!  But this is how I made the window curtains:




For Kindergartners, I have always constructed lift the flap books for them by gluing down the flaps in advance.  (My favorite lift the flap book that we do faithfully every year is our Rhyme Song Book, which you can see here.)  This is just one of MANY "Singable Books" for children to make and read that we have for sale on our website.




This does take some prep work, but I always envision all at least half of my little ones gluing the flaps down completely, which would force me to stop the drawing lesson and try to somehow fix it, possibly ripping the paper and sending the child into tears!  (Not good!)  Then I would have to take the book apart and give the child a new page, and all of that sounds like a LOT more trouble than just doing it myself for them in the first place!




When I do guided drawing, I draw my picture very large on a dry erase board, and then also do it on a small piece of paper so the children can get an idea of the relative size.

As you can see, when I do guided drawing with my class, I like to draw my picture on a small piece of paper first so the children can get an idea of the relative size of the drawing.  Then I show them again on a nice big dry erase easel.




Here are some pictures from when I did this Monster Guided Drawing lesson with my class last year.  They loved it so much that many of them chose to continue working on it during their playtime!  I love it when that sort of thing happens!  Above is one of my favorite finished drawings.




As you can see, I also combined some elements of my Halloween Guided Drawing lesson into this lesson as well!  They loved that!




The kids were excited to color in their drawings and many chose to keep going with it during their playtime! This is the view of the coloring table from my classroom loft.

Here is a link to download the Monster Guided Drawing Lesson.  And here is a link to download the master for the Monster Behind the Door Book! 


Meanwhile, here is another great Singable Book for Halloween that your kids might enjoy!  Mine always LOVE this one!




If you would like to see more of my guided drawing lessons, the best place to find them is to look on my Pinterest Guided Drawing Board! I have links to all of them there.  Otherwise, just put the words "guided drawing" into the "search this blog" box on the upper left side of this page and see what comes up!

- Heidi


P.S. Don't forget all our videos are available to STREAM on UScreen, FREE for the first 30 days! It's an awesome way to bring some EASY, active learning to your students during this time, and they can always cancel right before they are ever charged, like on day 29! Check out the info page on our website for more info!




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