Hey, Frankie ...

The boys are doing Frankenstein Week for school right now. About a week ago I found a Great Illustrated Classics version of Frankenstein at a thrift store. I thought that might be a good version to read to the boys, since the original is a lot more complex. I never knew Mary Shelley was only nineteen when she wrote the original story in 1818. That's pretty impressive, especially for the monster to become such a universal figure. So, for the past two days, we've started that book and are really enjoying it. I love the original movie with Boris Karloff and watch it every October. I'm not sure if the boys will want to watch it with me or not after reading the book. We'll see. It always makes me sad at the end to see the monster destroyed. 

Yesterday the boys made Frankenstein monsters out of paper plates. I made one too, but edited the picture so you can't see mine. He looks silly -- more like Dracula with green skin. Anyway, after the boys painted their paper plates, I let them design their monster however they wanted. I thought it was interesting to see them come up with different ideas for the neck bolts. Neil used clothespins and Nathan used paper clips. I used foam, so the boys definitely have a lot more imagination than I do.

Today we made Frankenstein heads out of empty water bottles. We came up with our own design and when they were finished, Nathan suggested we send the idea to Highlights for Children magazine. So, I'm going to do that before posting a picture because they're kind of strict when it comes to that sort of thing. If they reject it, then I'll go ahead and post it eventually. They were super easy to make because we painted them on the inside of the bottles, so there was hardly any mess. They turned out great and hopefully I can share them sometime. Tomorrow we're making Frankenstein monsters out of cans. I can't remember what we're doing for Thursday, but Friday we're making Frankenstein monsters out of marshmallows - Franken-Mallows!