10 Literacy Activities About Monsters

There are lots of great monster-themed activities for young children. Today I'm sharing ten of my favorites, all of which have a literacy focus.

• Sing Horns and Fangs, a monster-inspired version of Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes found on this handout from Perry Public Library. 
• Share my original flannel board rhyme Knock Knock! Trick or Treat?, in which each of several doors conceals a different monstrous creature. 
• Imagine what you'd do if you were a monster with a short and sweet action rhyme called If I Were a Monster. 
• Count and roar along with One Little Monster, a piggyback song I wrote based on One Little Finger.
• Tap into your monstrous side with the Monster Stomp, an action rhyme modeled after this dinosaur-themed activity.
• Read Where the Wild Things Are, then play my Catch a Wild Thing rhyming game. 
• Play shaker eggs or other musical instruments along to the Raffi song Les Zombies et les Loups-Garous, which translates to The Zombies and the Werewolves! 
• Retell Peter McCarty's picture book, Jeremy Draws a Monster, using the flannel board.
• Prove that you're a monster and you know it by singing this piggyback song based on If You're Happy and You Know It. 
• Read The Monster, a poem about imagining monsters in different rooms around the house, which can be seen here at Just 4 Teachers.

For more monster ideas, check out my monster-themed story time plans.

13 Literacy Activities About Spiders

Celebrate spiders with these 13 literacy activities, collected from my archives and various educational blogs around the web. 

• Sing The Itsy Bitsy Spider a cappella, play it on ukulele, or guitar, or change the words to incorporate multi-colored or differently sized spiders. 
• There are many wonderful folktales about Anansi the Spider, including adaptations by Gerald McDermott and Eric A. Kimmel. Introduce little ones to this eight-legged folk hero using Raffi's song, Anansi from The Singable Songs Collection.
• Give your young friends the shivers with There's a Spider on the Floor, also by Raffi, which features a spider slowly climbing up one's body. 
• Enjoy I'm a Hungry Spider, a song to the tune of "I'm a Little Teapot" which Growing Book by Book featured last Fall. The song promotes rhyming skills and phonological awareness, as well as physical movement. 
• Demonstrate how a spider uses her web using Four Colorful Flies, a rhyming story I wrote  about the four colorful flies who are captured one by one in a spider's web. The clip art flannel board pieces I used for the story can be seen in this post. 
• Tell and retell Eric Carle's The Very Busy Spider, using these free printable stick puppets created by Jessica from Littlest Scholars. Without the sticks, these pieces could also be used on the flannel board.
• Play a name game with The Silly Willy Spider. The simple verse tells of a silly spider who climbs on each child in the group in turn, then jumps onto someone else. The words are available here.
• Count down from four with the Four Little Spiders rhyme from King County Library System. It works as either a fingerplay or flannel board. 
• Have kids act out the creation of a spider web using their hands with the help of Spider, Spider, a simple action rhyme.  
• Visit Can Teach for the text to The Spider Poem, which explains the differences between spiders and insects. (It is the fourth poem on the linked page.) 
• Teach opposites vocabulary and make kids giggle with a silly joke using Spiders, a poem shared here by a school in Billings, Montana.
• Create a Word family Spider like the one shown here, on the blog Thank God It's First Grade. 
• Practice color words with this free printable sight word reader from Lydia at Owl Be in Kindergarten. 

10 Literacy Activities About Pumpkins

Pumpkins are a popular preschool theme this time of year! Check out these ten great activities to accompany your pumpkin lessons and story times.

• Count from Five Little Pumpkins Round down to none with a piggyback song based on Five Green and Speckled Frogs which I created several years ago for the flannel board. (A free printable adaptation, Four Little Pumpkins Round, is also available here.) 
• Practice reading with the Where is the Pumpkin? printable reader available to download free courtesy of Jamie Harnar at Teachers Pay Teachers. 
• Tell the very simple story of Mr. Scarecrow's Jack o'Lantern using puppets or flannel board pieces. 
• Act out the traditional Five Little Pumpkins rhyme. 
• Retell This is Not a Pumpkin by Bob Staake using a puppet or flannel board. 
• Sing Dr. Jean's Once I Had a Pumpkin, and review the vocabulary for each of the parts of a face. 
• Spell your name using Colorful Pumpkin Seeds, as shown at Fun-a-Day.com.
• Share the rhyme Five Giant Pumpkins on the flannel board, as suggested by Sarah from Read Rabbit Read. 
• Retell The Very Hungry Caterpillar as The Very Hungry Pumpkin using this clever idea from Crayon Freckles.
• Review the alphabet with a Pumpkin Letter Recognition activity, available as a free printable from Aloha Kindergarten. 

Great Books Not Yet Nominated for Cybils 2015

There is just over a week left in the nomination period for the 2015 Cybils, and there are a number of great titles that surprisingly  have  not been nominated yet! Below I have listed some of the books missing from the categories that I typically review.

Easy Readers

• A Pig a Fox and a Box by Jonathan Fenske 
• Mr. Putter and Tabby Turn the Page by Cynthia Rylant 
• Written and Drawn by Henrietta by Liniers

Early Chapter Books

• The Case of the Snack Snatcher by Liam O'Donnell 
• Shelter Pet Squad: Merlin by Cynthia Lord  
• The Not-So Itty-Bitty Spiders by Aimee Marie Stadelmann 
• Izzy Barr, Running Star by Claudia Mills
• Stink Moody in Master of Disaster by Megan McDonald
• Lulu and the Hamster in the Night by Hilary McKay 

Fiction Picture Books

• Roar! by Julie Bayless
• In a Village by the Sea by Muon Van
• Ask Me by Bernard Waber
• Such a Little Mouse by Alice Schertle
• A Wonderful Year by Nick Bruel 
• Little Baby Buttercup by Linda Ashman 

Middle Grade Fiction 

• Breaking the Ice by Gail Nall 
• Cassidy's Guide to Everyday Etiquette (and Obfuscation) by Sue Stauffacher 
• The Best Friend Battle by Lindsey Eyre 
• Bo at Iditarod Creek by Kirkpatrick Hill 

Young Adult Fiction 

• Saint Anything by Sarah Dessen