I love monster crafts because although you are ultimately making something that looks like a monster there’s so much scope for kids to make it look however they want. Want to have three eyes? That’s fine. Horns or a beard? Go for it, it’s hard to make a monster that looks too crazy! These paper bowl monsters are super simple to make and loads of fun too and you’ll also find some monster book recommendations to read alongside this fun craft.
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So with The Husband working this weekend and me stuck for ideas I thought it might be a nice idea to set up a monster play dough invitation to play for my son. This is the first ‘proper’ invitation to play I’ve done so far and we had a bit of a wobbly start but as you’ll see it turned out really well!
I’ve always been a bit….wobbly about the idea of an invitation to play because, well, kids do just play don’t they?! But then I thought the other day about how I view things, about how you could show me a dress in Marc Jacobs and I’d love you FOREVER if you bought it for me, but show me the same dress crumpled in the bottom in my wardrobe and I’d probably cry because I have nothing to wear. Likewise, my son is a ‘discerning’ eater, but give him a bento inspired lunch and it’s happy faces all round.
With this in mind monster play dough seemed a good place to start because he adores play dough and I figured I probably had enough ‘stuff’ for a monster set up!
What I included:
Googly eyes
Pipe cleaners
Play dough (ours is a gorgeous neon set but we are totally colour mixers here so it’s now green)
Pasta dyed black
A monster shaped cutter
Craft sticks
The tray that I placed it in is actually a leftover tray from one of those Tesco’s fruit selections. Recycling in action!
If you haven’t dyed pasta before, all you do is pop it in a bowl, add some food dye, wiggle it around a bit and then leave it out to dry. I found the drying took longer than it does with rice so this is a good one to prep the night before or if your kids are in preschool at all.
At first my son was a bit hesitant but after a bit of coaxing he was really into it, especially when he realised that his play dough monsters could be new villains to fight Batman! My husband came home while we were playing and he loved it too, all of us inventing new characters, it was loads of fun!
I think I’ll have to try a few more invitations to play, maybe some more Halloween inspired ones! If you’ve tried it with your kids do let me know how it went, I always love to share ideas with people!