Monster Masks

The book “Big Green Monster Go Away” is a classic.

With the approach of Halloween, this is an easy art project that works well for all grades. It also relates very closely to the simple vocabulary they have all already learned.

What’s Needed

These pieces are everything you need to make the masks.

For 8 students, you will need (A4 paper)

• 8 x paper plate
• 8 x green
• 2 x red
• 1 x purple
• 1 x blue
• 1 x white
• 1 x yellow

Grading the activity

As there is a lot of cutting involved, the easiest way to ensure that this fits in your class time is to reduce cutting for lower grades.

Here are my recommendations:

• Grade 5/6 – teacher cuts nothing, students cut everything
• Grade 3/4 – teacher cuts eyes and face, students cut the rest
• Grade 1/2 – teacher cuts everything, students glue only

First, Storytime

Read the story:

1. Review colors by holding up the bits of paper one at a time
2. Review facial features by pointing to yourself
3. Point to a premade mask and elicit yellow eyes, green face, etc
4. Read the story and have them chime in with the words (read twice if you like)

Make Masks

Demonstrate gluing the face to the paper plate.

Hand out plates and green paper.

Glue the green paper to the paper plate.

Add the eyes. Cut as shown below. Fold over then cut half-circles.

The following are examples of how to cut out the other pieces.

Generally, I’ll just leave it up to them, but for grade 1 and 2, this is the easiest way to prepare the whole thing.

You will still get lots of variation as they will stick the bits and pieces all over the place.

The activity is quite self-explanatory. Just leave them to it.

Notes

If students get stuck, it’s quite likely because they’re overthinking the whole thing.

There were quite a few instances where students just stopped because they were not sure or thought they needed to do something in a particular way.

When they show you anything, just give them a big thumbs up, they really can’t go wrong.