Drawing Monsters

When I teach 'face' vocabulary to my 3rd/4th graders, I always end the lesson by having everyone draw a monster. I will say, 'This monster has...' and have a kid roll a dice. If he rolls, say, a '5', I will then think up a color and say, 'This monster has 5 purple heads.' After working through the rest of the vocabulary list (eyes, ears, nose, chin, and mouth), the kids have the basic outline of a monster. I then ask them to fill in the details.

I am always disappointed with what seems to be a lack of creativity or imagination in their monster drawing. Most of the time, the kids look off of each other (remember, I have about 10 kids sitting in a circle) and all end up with the same picture.

But today I had two exceptions:

This one is from Motoki, a 4th grader. I imagine it would have been even cooler had he had more time to finish.



And this one is from Haruki, a 3rd grader. He named it 'Halloween Boy', and he probably would have been given a referral had he displayed this kind of creativity in America.