I love finding ways to turn items destined for the trash into learning tools and games in our homeschool. One day, we rescued an empty tissue box and turned it into a silly ABC monster! This easy tissue box monster craft became one of our favorite alphabet recognition activities. Our monster loves eating letters, and he keeps coming out of his cabinet “home” for more alphabet fun!
The ABC Tissue Box Monster was easy to make. Here are the supplies we found around the house:
I helped my daughter cover the tissue box with construction paper, leaving the slot open, of course. Then, she decided he needed three eyes (“he needs one on top too!”).
We had alphabet notecards already. For these, all I did was cut colorful index cards in half. I wrote the uppercase letters on one side and lowercase on the other. If you do not want to make your own, you could use any alphabet, site word, or number cards that you may already have!
My preschooler delighted in putting the letters in and out of the monster’s mouth! I asked her to say the letter names as he “ate.” My, that ABC monster was hungry. He wanted to eat the entire alphabet!
I was not sure that the ABC Monster would remain a staple in our homeschool. But my daughter surprised me. Despite the ease of this creation and the simpleness of the activity itself, she still likes to pull him off the shelf to feed him once more.
When she was a toddler, I found the repetition of letters in (take them out) and in again helped reinforce the alphabet for her, both uppercase and lowercase. She has no difficulty reading the letters now that she is in kindergarten. I suspect soon we’ll need to try something new now: names, perhaps, or some sight words?
What could be better than simple, quick, and educational?
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