I was feeling in the need of doing a crafty-sort of activity with the kids--I like it best when we have a lot of variety. My younger son is not yet overly adept at shape recognition AND happens to be interested in anything bearing the title of "monster." So I thought this activity would be a winner. It was pretty good, I'll say, but I'm not sure I'd call it a winner. Since the activity, I don't think my son has become any better equipped to distinguish one shape from another. Furthermore, the activity posed a lot of work for me that I'm not sure really paid off all that well, neither in the form of pure enjoyment nor in educational value. So...there you have it.
Anyway, here is the site that I got this idea from: Shape Monsters. If you go to the site, you'll see that the author's daughter created a really cute little monster. I didn't make the time to cut out all the shapes the night before like she did and honestly, it probably would have been a better idea to do so. Instead, in my lameness, I just asked the kids what they wanted and cut the shapes out as we went along. Here are our cute-in-their-own-way monsters:
I guess we did learn one thing from this activity. The prefix "octo" came into discussion because both sons wanted to put 8 of something on their monsters. One monster received 8 eyes and was given the name of "Octomonster Man." Very appropriate and creative. The other monster received 8 legs and 8 feet and was deemed, "Octoped." As opposed, of course, to Octopus, which was an option. We spent quite a great deal of time trying to think of all the octo-words we could remember. Since octogon was about the only other octo-word we could come up with I was worried that the discussion would prove a bit of a let down. But my kids were fine with taking about octogons as long as I cut one out for each of them.
In defense of this activity, my sons did get to spend time using the fine motor skills it takes to glue on all those little legs and eyeballs...so...that's a plus.
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