How to write poetry: Monster poems

Everyone has a monster. We have all dreamt up a scary something at one point or another. With a monster poem, you get to add some funny things to your monster or even take away the really scary bits, the choice is yours.

What you need:

• grey lead pencil for writing
• paper

Number of players:

Activity:

OK kids, this one is all about you guys and mixing the one thing that can keep you awake at night – monsters, then add to that some things you LOVE, like lollies, chips and your favourite flavours or even your favourite sport. It is easy. You just need to follow these steps and make sure you don't forget the details.

Firstly, think of your favourite thing. For mine, I think I will use my favourite foods – and there are many.

Next, we have to name the monster. I will name mine: The Yummy Yellow-Haired Monster.

After the name and subject matter (your favourite thing) have been chosen, start adding details to the body parts. Follow this guide but remember, you can add your own in too and have some fun with the wording!

Body parts, synonyms and other terms to get you started.

• head, skull, cranium, brain-box
• mouth, smile, smirk, grin, lips
• eyes, peepers, blinkers
• nose, shnoz
• ears
• torso, body, trunk
• legs, pins, pegs
• arms, wings
• fingers, hand-digits, pointers
• toes, foot-digits

Each body part on your monster will be represented by your subject and one of the objects that your subject surrounds. So, if you were saying athletics is your favourite sport and you wish to have your monster be an athletics monster, you may use batons as fingers. In my example of The Yummy Yellow-Haired Monster I could use fries as fingers.

Below is an example to give you something to follow.

The Yummy Yellow-Haired Monster.

The Yummy Yellow-Haired Monster has:
Full fried chicken cranium,
Fitted with stuffed olive eyes,
Cherry tomato nose,
Mixed salad, leafy mouth.
Boiling bubbly broth belly,
French fry fingers fitted to
Asparagus arms,
Lanky long bean legs – steamed,
With tic-tac toes to finish the meal,
There is one important feature,
Not mentioned and it's a mess,
The yellow hair you must know by now,
Noodles! Was that your guess?

Next time you are laying in the dark, think of your monster looking like this rather than the old, boring, scary version you once saw before. You will laugh yourself to sleep!

Image from Shutterstock.