Pack your tents and hit the great outdoors with your friends Monster and Mouse. But keep an eye on Monster…he tends to eat the equipment!
We read Monster and Mouse Go Camping, written by Deborah Underwood, and illustrated by Jared Chapman (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018). Mouse is very excited to camp, but Monster is reluctant…camping seems a little scary. However, with the promise of food, Monster is happy to try. Except that he eats the lantern, sleeping bags, and tent. Another problem? Mouse forgets to pack the ACTUAL food. Now the two friends are quite cold and hungry. Then they spot another campsite. Polite inquiries are made…only to get a unexpected reaction that makes this one of the FUNNIEST read-alouds, ever. Highly recommended!
You’ll need:
- 1 large tissue box
- 1 box cutter
- A selection of construction paper
- 1 manila file folder
- 1 toilet paper tube
- 1 monster camping equipment template on 8.5″ x 11″ card stock
- Scissors, tape, and glue for construction
- Markers for decorating
First, the monster! Use a box cutter to create a mouth in a large tissue box. Then decorate the box with construction paper (we also offered large eye stickers). While you are decorating, make sure to leave the tissue box hole hole open in the back. This will allow you to retrieve your camping food later.
As you can see in the above photo, our monster is also sporting a backpack. Ours was fashioned from an old manila file folder using this template. Curl the wings of the template around the circle, then secure everything in place with tape to create a “cup” backpack (we used color masking tape to decorate the backpacks too).
Attach the cup to an extra strip of manila paper, then tape or glue it to your monster box. Add a toilet paper tube mouse if you’d like:
Now for the equipment! Color and cut the items from the template, then feed each item into the monster’s mouth. Retrieve the items using the hole in the back of your monster box. And yes, we did make sure to include all the fixings for s’mores in the set:
One things I love about the simple and open-ended decoration projects is the styles and color combinations kids come up with. Here are just a few from story time!
Let this Sous Chef Souris help you make delicious pies! Your miniature kitchen has everything you need for creative baking – mixing bowls, wooden spoons, cutting board, rolling pin, pie pans, fresh felt ingredients, and, of course, matching chef hats!
On top of the cooking counter is some 
The cutting board and wooden spoons are tagboard. The knife is a little piece of silver mirror board with a black masking tape handle. Those two white circles are polyester batting “pie dough” for the mixing bowl, and the rolling pin is a 2.25″ snippet of bubble tea straw with a 3″ piece of drinking straw threaded into it.
The toilet paper tube mouse is sporting a chef hat made from construction paper and a bunched up facial tissue.
Your chef hat is made out of cardboard and white tissue paper. Instructions for making it can be found in 
When the kitchens were finished and the chefs were ready, we brought out our camera equipment (learn how to construct it 
First the concession stand, starting with that awesome popcorn machine! Our popcorn machine is a 4″ x 4″ x 4″ plastic favor box from Oriental Trading Company (item #13705345, 24 boxes for $9.50). Cut the clear lid off the top of the favor box and set it aside. Later, the this lid will be the “glass” front of the candy display case. You can leave the top of the popcorn machine open, or use a piece of poster board to create a new lid.
Cut and color the popcorn sign from the template and tape it to the top of the favor box. Then hot glue the popcorn machine to the top of a large box. To make the popcorn, scribble on 1-2 pieces of white printer paper with yellow marker. Cut the paper into tiny squares and crinkle them tightly. Serve your popcorn in 2 small paper sample cups. Use a marker or crayon to draw red stripes on the cup if you’d like!
What was playing that day? A mouse movie of course! It was