With Halloween quickly approaching I thought it would be fun to have fun with Monsters - the Cute, Friendly Monster Kinds. See, Buga is actually afraid of monsters lately. She thinks they live in our house and in her room. She conjures up these stories about them all the time and instead of telling her "there are no monsters" (because I feel like the Monster could just be a face to a real fear...like a representation of something deeper), we ask herabout them. What color are they? What are they doing? There are nice monsters. She has a nice Monster - his name is Stako. He often climbs her wall. She is always laughing at him and telling him to "come down off that wall". She thinks he's silly. And now, sometimes she even invites him into bed with her at night to cuddle up and sleep. Sometimes she even tucks him in.
In an effort to continue "playing with her fears", when I found this cute Monster border at the Dollar Store I had to buy it. First, they are super cute. Second, I thought it would be a good way to play with something she's afraid of -- to see them in a different way. The game is simple. We did the Match...we did the Monster Match. I cut up each of the monsters on the border and enlarged them. It was her job to match the little guys with the big guys. We also talked about labels, categories, similarities, and differences. We put them in groups based on a characteristics - like 2 legs or tentacles. I think I will make a couple more sized version of one or two of them so we can put them in size order : smallest --> largest or largest --> smallest.
I made some "Monster Masks" with some printed Monster Mouths...added popsicle sticks so you can hold them up. Throughout the day we used these to try to scare eachother or just pretend to be monster friends. She LOVED doing this - she loves pretending in general lately.
