Ideas

=Monster Ideas= Please add any ideas or suggestions you have for lessons or activities to make the Monster project a better experience for Kids and teachers.

10/9/07 My class really enjoyed reading all of your class descriptions and finding your town on the U.S. and world maps. I then cut the monster descriptions into strips and let student pick the one they wanted to work on. They made a list of paper sizes and colors that they need for their part and made a "paper order" for me. I showed the kids my monster project page from last year and the web pages last year's kids made. Please read some of their stories! http://share1.esd105.wednet.edu/blackl/monsterproject2006.htm It is fun to compare how the Naches monsters hanging in the hall looked similar, but different! So currently, we are in the construction phase. We have some questions to ask some of you about your descriptions!
 * Mrs. Black's Class 2007-8 Naches, Washington USA**

One of the things we do is download,print and laminate photos of last years Monsters from Mr. Smith's website. We create puzzles, matching games and bingo games from the images.
 * Miss Hope - Preschool -Paramus,N.J.**



Mrs. Magdos- First Grade- Webster, Texas
We put up a United States and World map on the wall and put up each participants body part description as well as a string leading to their city. Then as the pictures of finished monsters come in, I add the picture of the monster by the description. then everyone can see our monster, as well as everyone's!

Our classroom is alive and crazy with groups practicing to do Monster skits and movies. We watched a great example movie based on Star Wars. It looks like a little more than we can do with our equipment, but very motivating to us. See the videos at this link:
 * Mr. Smith's Class - Hannibal, MO**

http://www.needleworkspictures.com/vic/Films.html

We also use maps and globes to locate our Monster partners and figure out the differences in the various time zones.

An activity that the kids in our class love is ROBOTICS !!... we have the Lego Mindstorm kits in our school. Lego Mindstorms® Robotics Invention System (RIS) was created by Lego in collaboration with the centre of Leading & epistemology of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). It is a revolutionary new system that empowers Primary School (and olders) students to build robots.
 * Ms.Farheen Elahi's Class- Karachi, Pakistan**

The kids create different structures, creatures, and models using the lego pieces, you can even program the robots or any creature (perhaps a Monster) to follow simple instructions the kids tell them to do, like moving around, beep sounds, sensing objects etc. Once the students are done creating the model of their choice, they can create a story and present it in class, which helps to improve their communication skills & enhance their creativity.There are also kits available which include the video camera and studio to create a movie, so we can shoot a monster movie as well, once we are done making the monster using lego pieces! If you want to have these kits in your school as well you can visit the official website of lego mindstorm for details: http://mindstorms.lego.com/