Pennington Publishing Blog

Trick or Treat!

Looking for a great pre-Halloween or pre-Open House activity to scare your kids into learning high frequency Greek and Latin word parts? My Word Part Monsters will do the trick (or treat). Download the FREE lessons after these directions.

This three-day activity works well before Halloween and gets student artwork up on the board–oh, and it also is a fun word part review activity. Tell your students that they will create their own Word Part Monsters.

Provide the research-based Monster Word Parts list of Greek and Latin prefixes, roots, and suffixes (all morphemes) to get plenty of combinations monster part combinations (included in the FREE download at end of article).

For example, the dreaded mono oc pyr cap kin (one-eye-fire-head-little) monster.

Directions

Day 1

1. Quick draw, in pencil, two rough-draft monsters, using at least three prefixes, roots (bound bases), or suffixes from your Monster Word Parts list.
2. Write the name of your monsters, using the word parts, at the bottom of each drawing. Feel free to use connecting vowels to tie together the word parts.

Day 2

3. Choose one of your quick-draw monsters and neatly draw and color it on construction paper.
4. Write the monsters’ name on the back, using the word parts. Turn in your monster to the teacher. Don’t turn into a monster for your teacher.

Day 3

5. The teacher has numbered all of the monsters and posted them around the room and created a list of the monster names. Number a sheet of binder paper and write down all of the monsters’ names next to the correct number.

Option A (challenging)—Choose from the monster names that the teacher has written on the board.

Option B (very challenging)—Choose from the monster names that the teacher has written on the board and use the definitions to write a sentence, describing what the monster is like.

Option C (very, very challenging)—The teacher does not write down the monster names on the board. You have to figure them out based upon the drawings alone.

6. The winner(s) are the students who identify the most monsters correctly.

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Check out more vocabulary games in the grades 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 Comprehensive Vocabulary and Greek and Latin Morphology programs. Including interactive Morphology Walls!

Download the FREE Morphology Monsters Lessons

Covers All Grade-Level Standards

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