"The Mystery of the No-Neck Monsters"

[DeboraDyess]

My oldest daughter and grandkids moved back home last week so, as a 'stay-at-home-grandma', I'm back to looking fro summer fun ideas. (Boy, was this easier 25 years ago!)

I love books, and found a cool site -- boogerbooks.com. I LOVE the name! I got a copy of 'The Mystery of the No-Neck Monsters' and love it, too. It's a rhyming tale of ... well, no-neck monsters that invade the house. It was written by a mother-daughter team, and they're both teachers. They call their books 'educaitonal fiction' because they're geared toward exciting kids about reading, introducting it to them in a fun way and getting them on the road to reading well early on. They have 3 books so far, and this one has a CD for independent 'reading' time for the kids. My grands LOVE it.

I'm using it as an activity starter. They've already read it several times (via granny and the cd). I decided to have a 'monster party' because of their interest. We made some face paint, got fake fur and fake eyelash adhesive (trim the fur off the backing, use a little eyelash adhesive to give them fur -- sparingly!) and hair gel. We dressed up as monsters, played monster bingo, had monster races and a monster parade around the block, banging drums and cymbals and growling like crazies. (Wonder what the neighbors think!) We made monster cookies (just decorated them 'scary', whatever that means) and monster juice (koolaid and sprite, but watch out -- it kind of explodes in the sprite bottle). FUN, FUN, FUN!

There's a cool video about the book at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4anU3mj2TAM and you can find the book at boogerbooks.com

Let me know if you have fun ideas for 7, 3 and 2 year old kids. Especially if they relate to books, or are based around a book.

Thanks, Deb

[stepmom1]

Those books sound really great. One idea is to see if your local library has story hour to take your grandkids to.

[CoolCaliMom]

My son's favorite book is Where the Wild Things Are! He loves dressing up like Max and the other monsters. We're having some of the neighborhood kids over for a Monster's Ball on his birthday. They're supposed to go swimming, but I know some of them will be scared of that. I'm shopping for a monster skateboard as a present.

It sounds like your younger grandkids might be too young for this.....the 7 year old may be able to appreciate playing "M-O-N-S-T-E-R" instead of horse as a basketball game. My husband started doing this with Hunter's mini hoop. When they take shots, they come up with special ways to walk and rawr that are part of the shot.