I read the book, “No More Monsters for Me” by Peggy Parish to all the kindergarten and first grade classes. The students were very frustrated because I wouldn’t show them the pictures in the book. Half way through the book we stopped, and the students drew their own idea of what the Monster should look like. After reading the book and looking at the pictures, we discovered that kindergarten and first grade students have much more imaginative ideas about monsters than the illustrator, Marc Simont does.

In this lesson students learned that a story can build pictures in your brain, and that the pictures can be further developed by recording them on paper. They also learned that an illustrator does that for people, but that their ideas are not the only possible ones.

In this post you can see example moster drawings by Arlen in Nevarez’s homeroom, Brian in Estrada’s homeroom, and Iris in Jacobson’s homeroom.