By Caroline See

Art teacher Sarah Fitzgerald and the first grade kids have been working on their monster projects relating to the book Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak.

Fitzgerald explained how this unit is perfect for this spooky time of the year because it gets kids excited for Halloween. She also expressed the need for projects like this for children, “Although I really like the weaving and textile unit, it’s really fun to see what kids come up with in this unit. You just can’t teach creativity. Once kids get older they get more self conscious about their art, so projects like this are perfect for young kids to express their imagination.”

To begin the project, students watched a video of the book to notice what features a monster usually has. After the video Fitzgerald showed pictures of the “wild things” from the book and pointed out features such as fangs, horns, colors, and skin texture so kids could add similar features to their monsters. A first grade girl pointed out, “I colored my monster green and red because my favorite holiday is Christmas!”

“I used the color red for my monster because it makes it look more scary,” said Abe Erickson.

Once the kids were all done creating a scary monster, they lined up by Mrs. Fitzgerald to add the cherry on top to their sundae: the googly eyes.

Next time you stroll through the Elementary school be sure to look for all the scary (but adorable) monsters the kids have been working on!