I love the illustrations in Where the Wild Things Are. Mr. Maurice using such wonderful texture throughout the entire book! His monsters are morphs of all kinds of different creatures. I use my zoom on my Elmo Projector to read and show the kids all the different textures and parts combined in each monster. We fill out the worksheet together after reading. It has them observe and practice visual texuture, and then shows them how to create it with colors. I teach the kids about tints and shades of one color (pink is red with white, burgundy is red with black) I also teach them about lighter or darker values of colors that are close on the color wheel (yellow is lighter than yellow orange but they are close in appearance and in the same family). They draw the texture with the darker color crayon of colored pencil and then overlap it with an all over color that is lighter. I caution them not to pick a color too close in value or it will hide all of the texture work. On the back, they sketch out 3 ideas for different monsters.... It also guides then through the creative writing activity. They have to explain what their monster consists of and what they are like. This is a good time to write vocabulary on the board for animal characteristics: Omnivore, Herbivore, Carnivore, Marsupial, Mammal, Reptile, Amphibian, Nocturnal, Arachnid, Insect, etc. These first 4 are mine... sorry, I love drawing monsters! I use them as examples for the kids to look at for ideas. This is the story outline for the monster above.... STUDENT EXAMPLES Faith Larry Brianna Calli M. Morgan G. Rikki S. Carmen S. Angel S. Victoria