Time of Connection (including time zones)

Oct. 30, 10:30 CST, 

 

Classroom A: Dana Simpson (Brookhaven, Killeen, TX)

 

Swampy the Monster

 

Materials used on the head

 

7 paper plates

8 plastic small plastic cups

2 hot glue sticks

2 green balloons slightly blown up

1 pink balloon slightly blown up

1 yellow balloon slightly blown up

About 25 short cut pieces of green yarn

About 25 short cut pieces of brown yarn

4 red triangular shaped pieces using construction paper

1 medium sized circular shaped piece of green construction paper

4 green tiny sized circular shaped construction paper

2 red tiny sized circular shaped construction paper

1 red half circular shaped piece of construction paper

1 yellow shaped jagged edged shape construction paper

15 white plastic cups pieces cut into thin rectangular shapes and curled

2 pieces of white curly yarn

White yarn to attach the parts

Glue

2 glue sticks

½ heavy yarn

Materials used for the body

 

2 large shoeboxes

1 piece of red rectangular construction paper

2 pieces of light blue rectangular shaped construction paper

1 piece of green construction paper

2 light blue balloons

1 orange balloon

1 green balloon

1 red balloon

Brown yarn

Green yarn

White curly yarn

Purple yarn

White yarn to attach parts

Materials for the legs and arms

 

2 pieces of purple construction paper

3 green pieces of construction paper

1 brown piece of construction paper

Brown yarn

Purple yarn

Newspaper to fill the inside or each

White yarn to attach parts

Materials for the hands and feet

 

1 brown piece of construction paper for one hand

1 red piece of construction paper for the other hand

Green construction paper for fingernails on one hand

Yellow construction paper for fingernails on the other hand

2 tissue boxes

Green construction paper covering the boxes

How we made the head

 

 Joining three plates to form our three-headed monster

 

Our monster’s has three heads that are each made of paper plates.  To put together the head we attached 3 paper plates together by punching holes on the edges of each plate and then tying each plate together using yarn. 

Attaching the Head Directions

 

To begin we punched 2 holes on each end of the three plates about half way down from the top of the plate near the edge (like making a mask). Next we cut three 3-inch long pieces of brown yarn.  Using one piece of the yarn we threaded the yarn though the hole on one edge of the first paper plate and then through and another hole on the second paper plate attaching the two together.   Holding the yarn tightly we securely tied two knots attaching the first and second plates together at the sides. Then using the other piece of brown yarn we threaded the second piece of yarn through the hole on the edge of the second and third paper plates and attached them by tying 2 more knots.  We had two of the faces attached at this point.  To attach the third paper plate we threaded the third and first plate using the last piece of brown yarn and securely tying 2 knots to hold the plates together.  This completed attaching all three plates on the edges.  Next we poked one hole through the top edge in the center of each of the three plates.  We then cut three more 3-inch pieces of brown yarn.  After that we tied each plate together at the top of the three plates by carefully threading brown yarn through each of the holes and securely tying each.   After attaching the top part of the head, we blew up a medium sized green balloon and placed it in the center of the heads just beneath the attached plates.  We added the balloon to keep the plates firmly in place.  Once we finished this step we attached the fourth paper plate to the bottom of the head.  To attach the heads to the bottom plate we punched one hole on the bottom edge of each of the three faces. Next we punched three holes in the fourth plate lining the holes up evenly with the holes punched in the three plates of the heads.  After cutting three more 3-inch pieces of brown yarn we threaded each hole on the head to the adjoining hole on the hole on the bottom plate.  Attaching these one by one we securely tied knots in each forming the structure for our monster’s head. 

Making mouths for each head

 

After completing the basic head structure we began attaching three additional plates to attach mouths on each of the three heads.  To do this we first cut six 3-inch pieces of brown yarn.

We then took three paper plates and folded each one in half with the curved part of the plates facing inward toward the center of the mouths.  Next we punched 2 holes on both sides of each plate near the edge right inside the crease where we folded the plates.   Each plate used to make the mouths now had one hole on each end.    Before attaching the mouths to the face structure we folded the mouth structure in half and then cut a small half circle in the center of each.  These need to be about ½ inch in diameter or they will be too large.  Next we slightly blew up one pink, one green and one yellow balloon and then tied each of the ends into individual knots to prevent air from escaping. Next we opened the paper plates and placed the small balloons inside each of the holes we cut in all three of the paper plate mouths making a tongue in the center of each mouth.  We then glued each of the balloons down by attaching the part we tied down on the balloon to back of each plate so they wouldn’t show.  One mouth had a pink tongue, the second mouth contained a yellow tongue and the third one had a green tongue.

Attaching the mouths to the heads

 

Taking one three-inch piece of brown yarn we threaded the yarn through the hole on the left side of the face on the edge and through the hole on the edge of the mouth.  We tied a knot securely attaching one side of the mouth to the face.   Next we attached the right side of the mouth to the adjoining right side of the face securely tying brown yarn into two knots.  This completes one mouth on one face.  Next we followed the same steps as above to attach the other two mouths to the remaining two faces.

Adding details to the face

 

We cut 4 triangular shaped teeth using red construction paper and attached 2 of them to two of the mouths.  Both were glued from the top part of the mouth pointing downward like fangs.  Rather than attaching fangs to the third mouth on our monster we decided to cut out rectangular shapes from the mouth kind of like a rectangular jack-o-lantern is made.  We tied brown and green pieces of varied lengths of yarn from the top of the head of our monster to make very sparse messy looking hair.  We attached the hair from the center of the head.

Eyes

 

Using small plastic cups we glued two cups with the bottom of the cup glued to the face of the first monster.  The two eyes are evenly spaced on the monster’s face where normal eyes would be on a human’s face.  Inside the cups for eyes we glued two small red dots for the monster’s eyeballs.  We then drew black blood vessels coming from the red eyeballs using black ink. 

The eyes on the second face on our monster were also made using two small plastic cups.  These were evenly spaced where normal eyes should be on a face.  This time we glued the cups with the rim attached to the face and on the flat part of the cup we drew two black round eyeballs with a circular shape surrounding both eyes. 

For the third monster we cut the top off two plastic cups.  We then glued both flat circular cup bottoms on the face equally spaced were normal human eyes would normally be on a face. Next we cut out two tiny round circles using green construction paper and then glued them in the center of both eyes.  Using a permanent marker we drew a curved eye shape around the green eyeballs in the center of the cut off cups.  We then cut out 4 small two inch pieces of brown yarn and glued three above the left eye and two over the left eye to form arched eye brows. 

Noses

 

We used a plastic cup we cut into a half circle for a noise on one of the faces.  We glued the rim of the cup to the face and placed it just below the eyes and above the mouth.  This nose was placed on the head that had a green tongue.

For the second nose we glued a small plastic cup with the rim attached to the face just below the eyes and just above the mouth.  We then cut out one piece of green construction paper that was cut in a circular shape and then glued it on the end of the nose.  This nose was placed on the face that had a pink tongue.

For the third nose we poked two small holes in the face below the eyes and just above the mouth on the face.  We then poked two hot glue sticks in the holes forming the nose.  To secure these we glued these down on the face.  This nose was placed on the face that had a yellow tongue.   We then cut about twenty 4-inch pieces of brown yarn and then glued two below the nose to make a mustache.  With the additional pieces of yarn e split them in half and glued them spread out near the top left and right hand side to make ears like a teddy bear would have. 

The body

 

 Using two boot boxes attached together with glue we made the body.

We placed one box a tiny bit smaller than the other inside a large boot box.  We glued these securely together.  We covered the outside of the box with red construction paper.  We cut out stacks of green, brown and white curly yarn about 2 inches long. After that we glued brown green and white yarn all around on the paper in no random order that was on the front of the box so it looked like our monster’s shirt.  Because this was a boot box the front of our monster opens revealing the organs found inside.  When you open the box a small green heart made from a droopy green balloon can be seem hanging from the top of inside the box.   Below the heart we attached two medium sized balloons (the one on the right was blue and the left one is pink) to simulate the lungs and below those we placed long pieces of spaghetti looking white yarn for the intestines.  The lungs/ balloons were attached by poking holes in the first box tying together the balloons to hole them securely in place.  We glued the intestines to the bottom and back of the inside of the box.  We also attached a red balloon that was slightly blown up in the back of our monster to form a tail.  We attached the tail the same way we did the lungs.  We poked a hole in the outside box before we gluing the second boot box to the smaller one.  To make the tail secure we tied several knots in the balloon larger than the hole and then glued it.  We covered the outside of back of the box with light blue construction paper. And glued brown, green and white short pieces of yarn all over the body making it look very messy.  After our monster is a swamp monster and could not be too neat and tidy. 

Arms/hands

 

To make the arms we used two whole green pieces of construction paper forming a cylinder shape.  We then traced around our hands to make two hands.  For one we used brown paper and for the second hand we traced our hand using red paper.  We had two hands; one was red and the other brown.  Next we stuffed both with newspaper and then glued the ends of the arms together and attaching one brown colored hand to the right side of our monster’s hand.  On the other side we glued on a red hand just below the arms.  Both hands have yellow fingernails.  We made our hands look like human hands. 

Legs / feet

 

The legs of our monster were made from construction paper that was rolled up into a cylinder.  Both were stuffed full of newspaper.  This formed the thigh part of the legs.  For the leg on the right side of our monster we used brown construction paper and for the left side we used green construction paper for the legs.  We then glued the bottom part of the construction paper thigh together.  To make the calves on our monster we used two purple sheets of construction paper.  We rolled both forming a skinnier cylinder then the thighs and then stuffed them full of newspaper.  After stuffing both calves full we glued two small rectangular tissue boxes to make the feet. Lastly we covered the tissue boxes with green construction paper.

Adding fur

 

 To complete our swamp monster we cut out a whole roll of brown yarn.  These were cut into three inch pieces.  We also cut an about 20 pieces of purple yarn into 3 inch pieces. These pieces of yarn were then glued to both arms and to both thighs of our monster making him fairly hairy.  Last we glued about 10 pieces of brown yarn to the right purple calf of our monster.

Our monster was very complicated to explain and we hope our instructions were clear.

Mrs. Simpson’s class  J   Have fun!

 

 

Classroom B: Allene Graves (Hubbard ISD, TX)

 

Fourth Grade Monster

 

 

HEAD & FACE:  The head is a ball of orange bulletin board paper 26” in circumference.

Eyes:  Use 2 4” tall styrfoam cups.  In the center bottom of each cup, glue a 1” green

Const. paper circle that has a black dot in the center of it.  Glue the cups on one side of the head with open side down, edges touching about ½” from top of head.

Nose: Cut 1” Styrofoam circle and color orange.  Put 2 black dots on it (like a pig’s nose).Glue in center of head 4” from top.

Mouth: Cut smiley mouth 4” X ¾” from purple constr. paper.  Draw upper and lower rows of teeth. Color the teeth yellow. Glue on head 2 ½” from bottom in center of the head.

 

BODY:  Three  9” paper plates.  Color (just the centers, not the scalloped edges) one red, one blue and one green.  Place the plates in an upside down triangle (the red on the monster’s right, the blue on the monster’s left and the bottom one green).Glue the edges of the red and blue together and then the bottom edges of them to the top edge of the green.

 

ARMS & HANDS:  Make  two 12” long cylinders 2 ½” in diameter.  One should be purple and the other yellow construction paper.  Using four 6” Styrofoam plates, color the outside rims orange and the inner circles black.  Glue  two of the plates together at edge.

Do same to other two,  Should look like claws.  Glue each hand on the ends of the purple and yellow cylinders (arms).  Between the claw hands – glue a section of newspaper to make the monster look like he is holding and reading the newspaper.  We used the Hubbard City News Classified section so you can use any paper and any section.

 

LEGS & FEET: There are four legs.  Use 2 pieces ofblack constr.paper to make 2 cylinders 12” long and 1” in diameter.  Use 2 pieces of orange to make the other two cylinders the same size.  Using a pattern of black, orange, black, orange, glue the first black cylinder on the bottom of the green plate and a slight angle outward.  Using a orange cylinder, glue it with the edge touching the black cylinder making a “V” out of the two.  Move over 2” on the bottom and glue  the other black cylinder, then glue the orange on the same way as the first orange cylinder (making the “V”).

For the feet, glue the open ends of two 6oz.  Styrofoam cups together.  Do this to make a total of four feet.  Color two of the bottom ends of the cups black and the other two orange.  On the black legs, glue a foot onto the bottom  with the orange side facing out. On the orange legs, do the same but using the black side facing out. The cylinders(legs) should be glued onto the cups (feet) at the back top edge of the cups.