Students in Mrs. Fritz’s Family and Consumer Science (FACS) classes at Clara Brownell Middle School recently teamed up with preschoolers from McNary Heights Elementary for a fun project. The seventh and eighth grade students helped the younger students design monsters and then made them into tangible buddies.
The project started with the preschoolers reading the book, “I Need My Monster” by Amanda Noll. This imaginative story introduces young readers to the quirky world of monsters who live under children’s beds and sets the stage for the students to dream up their own unique monster. After reading the book, the middle school students visited the preschool classroom. Each middle school student paired up with a preschool student, and together they colored monster templates. The preschoolers drew their monster ideas, and the older students helped them name their creations and decide what their monsters liked, what scared them, and their favorite colors.
Then, the middle schoolers took the colored drawings to their classroom and started working on making the monsters. They used different colors of felt and sewed them together by hand, using the stitches they had learned in class and added buttons for more detail.
On April 22nd, the middle schoolers returned to McNary Heights to give the finished sewn monsters to the preschoolers. The young students were so excited to get a monster buddy that looked exactly like what they had colored and described. The middle schoolers, in turn, were happy to present the finished monster to them.
This is the third year that Mrs. Fritz’s Family and Consumer Science (FACS) Classes have carried out this project. These classes focus on teaching students practical skills in subjects such as nutrition, cooking, sewing, and fashion design. Mrs. Fritz said this is a great project to bridge the gap between their sewing and child development units.
