Time of Connection (including time zones)

Oct. 28, 9:30 EST--not moderated

Classroom A: Amy Czech (Lakeshore Middle School, Stevensville, MI)

Mrs. Czech’s 2^nd Hour (6^th Grade Language Arts)

Monster Description

Lakeshore Middle School, Stevensville, Michigan

Our monster’s name is Twix. Twix is from a magical land filled with donkeys called Eluthra. (It lives in a football stadium named Al Stockman Stadium.) Twix likes to eat butterflies and popcorn. It is afraid of hippos. Twix loves to pop balloons using a hammer while on a seesaw or teeter totter. It comes out on football Friday’s and snacks on the opposing teams’ kids. It drives a grocery cart to the away football games.

Head Instructions:

Get a shoebox about 8 inches wide and 12 inches long. The face will be going vertical. Cut out a piece of black paper to fit around the lid. Tape it tightly around the top of the shoebox, so the top of the lid isn’t showing at all. Then cover the bottom of the shoebox with black paper and tape it in place. Get 2 styrofoam cups then glue to 2 black paper circles on the bottom. Then hot glue the eyes about 1 inch from the top . Cut a large circle out of the lid of the box about 2 inches from the bottom. This will be the mouth. Next get a pink 12 inch piece of yarn and tape it inside bottom the mouth for the tongue. After that, put lots of hot glue at the top ridge of the cups. Place them about 7 inches above the hole (Or mouth). Then blow up a very small green or turquoise balloon for the nose. Tape it below the eyes. Get 2 more styrofoam cups and hot glue each on one side of the box for horns. Last cut out 5 small, green polka dots and place them so there is 3 on the left side and 2 on the other side.

Body Instructions:

First wrap 6 boxes in different colors. One light blue, one green, one black, one red, one yellow, and one orange. Next, put the red box on the bottom. Then put the black box on top of that, with half of the box hanging off the end, and do the same with the blue one next to the black. Set the orange one on top of the black and the green on top of the blue. Stack the yellow one on top of the green and orange right in the center. Next wind up some pink string and stick it on the middle of the light blue box to make a belly button. Put 6 inch strands of pink and blue string all over the boxes just for decoration, about 2 on each box.

Arms Instructions:

First, you wrap up three pieces of newspaper in a roll about 2 inches in diameter. Hold them with rubber bands. Then cover them with orange paper. Hang about 20 pieces of black yarn various sizes from the arm. Then glue it. Cover a cup with black paper and glue it to the arms. Cut two triangles with orange paper as claws. Tape them to the small end of the cup. Do all of that again for the second arm.

Next you will build a torch for one arm. Roll up one piece of newspaper. Cover it in black paper. Put a cup inside the roll of newspaper. Put a red balloon in side the cup. Tape the balloon to the cup. Cut out 2 orange triangles to tape to the balloon as fire. Glue it to the arm.

Legs Instructions:

For the legs, get four skinny boxes (about 4 ½ inches wide and about a foot long, two boxes that are slightly bigger than the other two). Connect the two legs with three green pieces of yarn (about 7 inches long) Then, wrap all four boxes in black paper.

For the feet, get a bunch of newspaper and scrunch them up into a ball. Make it so the balls are 10 inches in circumference. Then get a big sheet of white paper (1 foot 11 inches X 2 feet 4 inches) and put the balls of newspaper in the middle. After that, wrap up the balls of newspaper in the white paper. When it’s wrapped up it should be about 2 feet 3 inches in circumference. Then take four paper plates and cut out a shape that looks like a bubble gum wrapper’s twisty. Use glue to glue the twisties onto the feet. Then cut a yellow square like piece of paper, a little bigger than the monster’s foot. After that, cut out a circle from the paper (about 6 inches in circumference.) Meanwhile on the legs, get a red piece of paper, and cut out the letters: T, W, I, and X, and tape them to the leg. Do this to each thigh and shin.

Back to the feet, for the yellow dot, cut out the word ‘GUM’ in red paper and glue it to the dot. Do this to each foot. Lastly, glue the feet to the legs.

Classroom B: Karmen Brower (Upton Middle School, St. Joseph, MI)

We would like to introduce our monster named Omar. Omar is 7,200 years old and his species is Dagmar. He lives in and behind toilets. He likes to eat beef stew and yellow broth.

Head Instructions:

1. Get a shoebox that is about 6 inches wide and 12 inches long. Start by using tape and cover the entire shoebox with yellow construction paper. Make sure the entire shoebox is covered with the yellow construction paper. As you create the face, the shoebox will stand up vertically.

2. The eyes will be 2 white balloons, blown up to a circumference of 8-½ inches each. The monster has blue eyes, with an obvious black pupil and his eyes appear to be bloodshot! These can be drawn with markers. After you have created the eyes, tape these towards the top of the box.

3. You will need to get 4 6-ounce Dixie cups for the top of his head, which will continue down the back of his head. Punch one hole in the bottom of each cup and then stick 5 pieces of 14-inch long string through the bottom of the cups. Once the string is through the bottom of the cup, tie it so that it will not go back through the hole. Our monster prefers rainbow colored hair. After completing the hair (4 Dixie cups), tape one of them directly in the middle of the very top of the box and the remaining three will be taped evenly down the back of the head.

4. Take one standard sized paper plate and cut the inside out (or we could say cut the rim off.) The rims will serve as the horns, on top of the head. Cut the rim in half, so that you end up with 2 horns. Each horn should be about 9 inches long. Tape these towards the top of the box, right above the eyes, but not on top of the box.

5. The inside of the paper plate will be cut in half to become the ears. Put a half-inch crease along the flat side of the cutouts and tape them to the sides of the box (of course, one on each side.) Our monster likes to be symmetrical!

6. Our monster has a big-red nose. Use a red 20 ounce party cup and tape it right below the eyes. The mouth is made of black construction paper and resembles a 7-inch moustache. To finish the face, we used a red marker to draw his tongue, which is hanging down from the middle of the moustache and a black half circle to resemble the lips.

Body Instructions:

The body consists of 10 standard sized paper plates. Place the paper plates upside down and color the inside of each paper plate purple with red spots. We stapled the edges of all the plates together, with 2 centered to serve as the middle support. If the staples do not work, please feel free to reinforce with tape. After the construction of the body, it will end up being a tunic shape (some of the boys said that it looks like a dress!)

Arm Instructions:

The right arm will consist of 3 balloons. Blow up a light green balloon to a circumference of about 28 inches, the second balloon will be dark green with a circumference of 24 inches and the third balloon will be yellow with a circumference of about 14 inches. Tape the three balloons together starting with the biggest, light green balloon at the top, the dark green balloon in the middle and the yellow balloon as the hand. The monster has 3 fingers at the end of the yellow balloon, which are made of 1-¼ ounce party cups. Tape the party cups to the yellow balloon. Our monster also has 3 fingernails taped to the front of the party cup, which are made from red construction paper. They are actually 3 cm equilateral triangles. Lastly, use a black marker and mark 46 hairs all over the balloons.

The left arm is symmetrical to the right arm however the 2 biggest balloons are yellow and the smallest balloon is dark green. Use the same dimensions as the right arm. The only difference is that on the left arm, our monster has a bracelet located in between the smallest 2 balloons. The bracelet is made from black construction paper and is 10 inches long and about 1 ¾ inches wide. The bracelet is decorated with 4 white spikes. The spikes are made from white paper and shaped like a cone. The spikes are 4 cm. long and taped evenly around the outside of the bracelet.

Legs/Feet:

Take 5 20-ounce gold party cups together for each leg. Tape these in the following order: First cup turned upside down, second cup right side cup, etc, so that each leg consists of 5 cups taped tops together and bottoms together. These will be legs for the monster.

The feet each consist of 2 9-inch paper plates taped together, stuffed with newspaper for more stability. Use a purple colored pencil and color each foot.

Tape the bottom of the legs to the top of each paper plate. We used packing tape for better stability.

Each foot consists of 3 claws. Taking another paper plate and cutting off the rim of the plate make the claws. Each claw will end up being 7 ¼ inches long. Cut the end of each claw to make a point at the end. Before taping the claws to the foot, color each claw black. Each foot needs 3 claws, which will be taped in front of the gold cup.

Assembly:

Start by using hot glue and gluing the bottom side of the body (tunic) to the tops of the legs. Next, hot glue the head to the top of the tunic and lastly the arms will be taped to the bottom of the head.

Good Luck!!!