If you’re looking for a fun way to bring learning into a Valentine’s Day theme for your preschooler, this cute little monster game is perfect for you. Kids will smile and giggle as they get to feed the Valentine Monster with different letters or words. Make some big, chomping monster sound effects when your monster is eating for some extra fun!
Things you will need for this monster box:
- empty tissue box
- paint
- paintbrush
- pom poms
- pipe cleaners
- googly eyes
- white cardstock paper
- scissors
- tacky glue
- tape
Step-by-step tutorial:
1. Prepare your box
Start by painting your empty tissue box. Let it dry completely.
2. Make and glue eyes & nose
Glue googly eyes onto large pom poms and then glue them onto your tissue box for the eyes. Also glue a pom pom onto your box for a nose. Make the end of two pipe cleaners in the shape of a heart and glue and tape them down onto your tissue box.
3. Cut out teeth
3. Make teeth and a talking bubble out of your white cardstock paper. Write FEED ME on the talking bubble and glue it onto your box together with the white teeth.
4. Finish by decorating as you like
Add any additional embellishments or decorations you want.
How to play the Valentine Monster Alphabet game:
Use a heart punch to punch out 26 hearts for your alphabet. I wrote the capital letters on one side of the hearts and the lower case letters on the other side of the hearts. I also cut out extra hearts and wrote the sight words on them that we have been working on.
Lay the alphabet hearts out in front of the Valentine monster box. Now you can play a few different ways:
1. The child can play independently by picking up each heart, reciting the letter and sound and then feed it to the monster.
2. You can recite something like “Yum Yum, the monster is hungry for the letter ____.” Then your child can find that letter and feed it to the monster. You can also play this way to work on letter sounds. For instance, say “Yum Yum the monster is hungry for the letter that says ____” or “Grumble grumble the monster’s tummy is hungry for the first sound in the word [cat].”
3. You can take turns playing with your child. You say a letter for them to find, and then they say a letter for you to find.
4. As I mentioned, we also played this game with sight words we have been working on. You could also work on CVC words like cat, bat, rat, etc. For toddlers you could use different colored hearts, or hearts with shapes drawn on them.