While skimming Pinterest the other day, I ran across the following image. Immediately, I knew I wanted to create a melodic game with this build-a-monster kit.
Monsters in music class are nothing new. If you do a quick search in Pinterest for “Elementary Music Monsters”, you’ll find a variety of pins with excellent ideas for both rhythmic and melodic concepts using the monster theme. One of the top hits is a pin about my Rhythm Monsters, which you can read more about HERE.
To play the Feed the Monster Game, you’ll need the following items:
I glued each piece to the front of the gift bag. Then, I used the precision knife to cut a hole for the opening of the mouth. I doubled up a piece of cardstock and placed it inside the bag before cutting. That way I didn’t accidentally cut through the back of the bag.
I’ll be describing how to play “Feed the Monster” as a whole-class collaborative game, but I think it would be equally effective (perhaps more so) as a center activity.
Whole-Class Collaborative Game Instructions
- Place the Solfege syllables, “Make a Snack”, and repeat cards into a cloth bag. The bag needs to be deep enough for students to stick their hands in and pull out a card at random.
- Choose a student to draw a card. If the student draws a melody card, the class sings it. If the class sings it correctly, the student who pulled the card gets to “feed the monster” by placing the card in the monster’s mouth.
- If a student draws the “Make a Snack” card, the class will compose their own four-beat melody. You can choose a volunteer to do this or the class could work together to create one. You could even have a volunteer improvise. It’s really up to you and what your students are comfortable doing.
- If a student draws a repeat card, the class has to sing the melody that came directly before it. For example, if they pulled s-s-m-s on the turn before, that’s the melody they sing for the repeat card.
- If the class does not sing a card correctly, that card goes back in the cloth bag.
- The game is over when the monster has eaten all the melodies in the bag.
Click the image below to download free printable tickets to use with the game. I also included a fillable PDF on the first page. You will be able to type in the syllables you want, print, and go!
If you’re looking for ways to assess, you could make this a center activity in which students come to you to “feed the monster”. Instead of letting them choose a card at random, you could have pre-selected cards for them to choose in order to assess a specific syllables.
I’m betting that you could invent several more ways to use this monster in your classroom. Please share your ideas in the comments section below. I’d love to hear about them!
6 Responses
Love this idea! I especially like the idea of the "make a snack" and "repeat" cards to add some more interest and variety, and sneak a little composition in there! 🙂 I'm working on my own version of some monsters for my music room now, so I'm excited to share those with you when I'm done 🙂 Thanks for sharing this! #fermatafridays
Awesome! I'm looking forward to seeing your classroom monsters and how you use them in class 🙂
I created sets to go along with the different rhythms they learn in Conversational Solfege. Trying it tomorrow!
Katie Morin
That's awesome! I'd love to hear how it goes 🙂
I'm using this this week with rhythms in small groups. While listening I realized that it was a perfect informal assessment as well!
That's awesome! I love that you've found multiple ways to use it 🙂