Monsters! ROAR!!! ROAR!!!

The question of the day was: Do you have a monster under your bed? Was this risky, yes! but the kids thought it was hilarious, "that's a silly question" and they loved asking each child who came in the door. Needless to say, they ALL did not have monsters under their beds :( I have to admit I was a little disappointed.

First book: The Gruffalo by Julia Donaldson & Axel Scheffler. Fun rhyming book, a lot of the kids were able to grasp the craftiness of the mouse. About midway I started adding long pauses prompting them to say "the gruffalo".  Then we danced to I'm the Biggest Monster by The Laurie Berkner Band. Kids love it when they get to roar.

The next book/story was Go Away, Big Green Monster! by Ed Emberley with flannel pieces. For some reason the kids thought this was hilarious as well (maybe they are giddy from being traumatized by the foot of snow we had five days ago, did I mention it is eighty degrees today?) I put emphasis on the Ed Emberley author hoping some of them would make a connection with two Emberley stories in a row, but they didn't so I got to tell them about it. I sang the book If You're a Monster and You Know It by Rebecca Emberley & Ed Emberley and we did all the movements and ROAR a lot. I had listened to the free recording, but didn't feel it was worth bringing the laptop to storytime
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I read Big Brave Brian by MP Robertson, which was not a hit with this crowd. We finished way early so I pulled out Jumpy Jack & Googily by Meg Rosoff & Sophie Blackall. This is one of my favorites because of the sheer irony of Googily showing Jumpy Jack that there are no monsters under his bed, when in fact he is a monster. I've done this before without many kids catching on, so I started by asking them what types of creatures Jumpy Jack and Googily were. They were able to pick up on the irony after that (mostly the four and up crowd).

Finished up with bingo dabbers, markers and googily, yeah that's right googily eyes to make our own monsters! ROARRRR!

There was even a green one with yellow eyes and purple hair (not pictured here).