Make a Monster - Collaborative Art Project

I am a huge fan of large group art projects - I love that each child can bring a different vision to the project.  I also love them for practical reasons, it's a lot easier to find space for one large project to dry than it is to find space for 20 small projects, and they use far fewer materials. 

One year I made a dragon with my class. I drew the outline on a large sheet of table paper, and they decorated it with bingo markers.  It was amazing to see the details that they included, and which parts of the dragon each child chose to work on.  I wish I could find a picture of it!

I think this would be an amazing project for making a giant monster.  It would really help the children take control of the fear related to monsters if they were able to create one themselves.  Monsters also have a number of different pieces and parts that smaller groups of children can work on to make the project a little more manageable.  If you have a group in charge of the body, another group in charge of the eyes, another group that makes the mouth, etc. then all of the children aren't attempting to work on the same piece at the same time. 

Once you've created the actual monster, don't forget to give him a personality.  The children can come up with:

• The monster's name
• It's favorite food
• Where it lives
• What kinds of things it likes to do

The children will be so excited to have ownership over such a large project!