Monster puppets add to this song! You can make them out of socks! Or help children make them.
Here’s a song to sing as the weather gets cooler and the ghouls start haunting the landscape. My “Monster Bonster” song was adapted from the song “I’m Playing with a Monster,” by Fran Avni and Nancy Schimmel.
In the song, children are invited to name the monster’s body parts, which all have the same starting consonant sound as the monster’s homeland. If the monster comes from Bonster, the monster has “begs” instead of legs, and “barms” instead of arms.
The technical term for this activity is “phoneme replacement.” A phoneme is a distinct unit of sound within language, so each letter has one or more phonemes associated with it. When children are able to articulate and replace phonemes, they have acquired an important language skill and an important pre-reading skill.
Here’s a video of the song, and here are the lyrics:
My name is Monster, I come from Bonster.
Let me tell you about me. All my parts begin with B.
Instead of legs, I’ve got “begs,” instead of arms, I’ve got “barms.”
Instead of a nose, I’ve got a “bose,” instead of a heart, I’ve got a “bart.” And so on.
You can also have children choose other consonants that rhyme with “me,” including d, g, p, t, v or z. You can make slight adjustments to the lyrics to accommodate consonants such as m or f. “Let me tell you about him – M;” “I’ll tell you about myself – F” (But don’t use ‘heart’ on the ‘f’ verse!)
Here is a template for an accompanying art project. Children can draw their monster, identify its home, and name its body parts. Have fun playing with the monsters!
