If your students or children are learning vocabulary, why not try creating a monster for fun? Vocabulary lessons, especially for basic words, can become boring drudgery if not made interesting. Fun, participatory lessons will make it easier for students to learn and remember new words. Because monsters are made up, children and adults alike can have fun inventing crazy features for them to have.
Introduce different body parts in the language you’re teaching. Monsters can have the usual body parts that people have, like faces, feet, arms, ears, hands, and heads. They can also have animal body parts like antennae, fangs, tails, wings, and fur. Especially if you’re working with kids, don’t forget the fun parts, like belly buttons and eyelashes. |
Basic building blocks.
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Talk about different colors. Body parts on fanciful monsters can come in all kinds of different colors. |
Red hair and green fur.
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Discuss what monsters wear. Some monsters have terrible fashion sense. |

A monstrous wardrobe.
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Mix in some other adjectives. Monster parts could be scary or funny, sharp or round, curly or straight, big or small. Be creative, and think of a variety of different adjectives. Brainstorm adjectives together with the class. |
Add prepositions if the class is ready for them. Does the monster have blue fur on its big belly? Does it have sharp teeth in its mouth? What does it have in its pockets or up its sleeve? |
Do you know where your monster is? |
Give students paper and crayons or colored pencils and have fun creating monsters of all sorts.
Have them label the defining features of their monsters. Take turns presenting the monsters to the class.
Turn the activity around. Have everybody write down the description of a monster in words, then trade descriptions and draw somebody else’s monster. Or, have students team up and describe (but not show) a monster they drew. See which team can describe their monsters most accurately to each other.
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