Maggy and her son and are visiting again from Red Ted Art, where they love to get crafty on a regular basis.
As my son rapidly approaches the grand age of three, monsters are becoming a little bit of a fascination… we made Monster Cards a while back (great for very young hands) and now we want to make friendly loo roll monsters!
These little guys are perfect for two reasons:
1) By definition you cannot get a monster “wrong.” However you make it, it will be a great monster – it can have several eyes, 2 noses, no mouth… whatever you want
2) They are a great tool for any bedtime monster fears: these are FRIENDLY monsters and you place them at the window sill or by the bed and they will scare away any naughty monsters in the night, looking after you as you sleep!
A monster book to reinforce the craft
Two Monsters by David McKee - This is a cute little story about a misunderstanding between two monsters: they live on either side of a mountain, but can talk to each other through a hole in it. One day, they get into an argument: one monster says that “day is departing” and the other says “that night is arriving.” This results in a rock throwing exercise that destroys the mountain. They are able to see each other for the first time and with that they are able to see each other’s point of view – they reconcile and are friends again.
It is a cute little story about tolerance and understanding, as well as friendship. At the same time all the rock throwing is lots of fun and makes Red Ted giggle.
Our craft
As mentioned above, there is really no right or wrong and you just have to make these monsters your way. I will list the items we used, but by no means do you have to use them, save for the loo roll!! Basically, I just went on a hunt for what we had lying around. If you have a rainy day box like Lynley has in the previous post, that would be ideal.
Materials:
- 1 loo roll per monster
- Paint
- Googly eyes
- Pipe cleaners for arms (optional)
- PVA glue
- Wool for hair
- Tissue paper for spots
- Card for stripes – you can paint these on or use paper cut outs or foam shapes! Your imagination is the limit!
1) Paint the loo rolls in the desired colour. We chose blue, yellow and green (which allowed me to throw in a bit of colour theory)!
2) Once dry, using your thumb and for finger squeeze the top of the loo roll and tuck one end under the other – this will give you the monster’s head – these could either be ears or horns…
3) Decorate! We decorated with googly eyes of different sizes. Some wool, glued on with LOTS of glue. Scrunched tissue paper for “boils” and corrugated card for stripes.
4) We made holes for the pipe cleaners with a pair of nail scissor – make sure an adult makes these. Insert the pipe cleaner and shape into hands!
5) Put on the window sill to scare away the monsters, or take them to bed for a cuddle!
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