Halloween Book Activity: Frank Was a Monster Who Wanted to Dance

My kids love doing activities with books, so we decided to do some fun Halloween Monster Activities with a favorite Halloween book. 

One of our favorite Halloween books is "Frank Was a Monster who Wanted to Dance" by Keith Graves. It's a short, quick, silly read.  In this book, our monster friend Frank decides to follow his dream to be a dancer, but after parts of his body start falling off as he dances, the audience leaves. Frank doesn't let that stop him though and continues to boogie.

One of the first body parts Frank loses is his eyeball, so we decided to play some eyeball games!

First, we turned some ping pong balls into eyeballs with markers. We used permanent markers, but I closely supervised them. You could also just make them yourself. While we made them, we talked about the parts of the eye and what each one was for. Art- check. Science - check.

Then we tried bouncing them into pumpkins. The boys loved this game. We gave each pumpkin a different point value and then added up points to see who won. So, ya know, math.

Frank also loses an arm. We figured an arm would make a good golf club. The boys traced around their hands, colored them in, cut them out, and taped them on to wooden utensils to make our arm golf clubs. We also looked at a picture online of a skeleton arm and hand and marveled at all the little bones that are in our hands. Developing fine motor skills - check!

Christopher made a simple golf hole for them to try and hit the ball in. We counted how many tries it took for them to get the ball in hole. 

The boys decided it would also be fun to play a game of basket"eye"ball. Nathan would hold the bucket and Christopher would try to throw the eyeballs in. Nathan tried to hold it really high to make it hard.

hey! get down from there! (but not until after I take a picture)

Since Frank likes dancing so much, we decided we should give it a try. One of my kids' favorite songs to dance to at Halloween is "Hall of the Mountain King" by Edvard Grieg. It's part of the Peer Gynt Suite. 

In the beginning, the music is very quiet. We like to pretend we are tiptoeing around a cave where there are sleeping trolls. 

It starts to get louder, and we start moving faster. 

When it gets really loud and fast, we must have accidentally awakened the troll king!! All the trolls are chasing us and the kids are dancing (ie. running around) like crazy. 

We ended our fun with some deliciously monstrous snacks - Eyeballs made from powdered donut holes, gummi life savers and chocolate chips. Yum!

We had a fun book activity and the boys are already planning another for next week! It's a good thing we have all these activities from other bloggers to choose from:

This post is part of an AWESOME Halloween Read and Play Blog Hop.  Make sure to check out the other book based activities from fantastic bloggers!

Pleasantest Thing- Goodnight Goon- Halloween Slime
LalyMom- Five Little Pumpkins- Clothespin Activity

The Jenny Evolution- Go Away Big Green Monster- Paper Monster

Hand Made Kids Art-  The Legend of Spooky the Square Pumpkin- Square Pumpkin Art

The Inspired Treehouse- The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything

Lovely Commotion- Pumpkin Pumpkin- Pumpkin Life Cycle

Bambini Travel- Broom, Zoom- Night Sky Activity

Chicken Babies- Frank Was a Monster Who Wanted to Dance- Monster Dancing and Eyeball Games

Preschool Powol Packets- Room on the Broom- Croaking Frog Craft

Adventures of Adam- Winnie the Witch- Multicolored Cat Project

Cutting Tiny Bites- Click, Clack, Boo!: A Tricky Treat- Sound Effects Box 

Cutting Tiny Bites- Click, Clack, Boo!: A Tricky Treat- Halloween Shadow Garland

Betsy's Photography- Popcorn- Making Popcorn Bars

All Done Monkey- Runaway Pumpkin- Rolling Pumpkin Experiment

Kitchen Counter Chronicles- It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown- Great Pumpkin Bowling Game
Mama Smiles- Where is Baby's Pumpkin?- Felt Board Activity and Coloring Pages

Craft Ideas for Kids- Spider Sandwiches- Halloween Sensory Play: Monster Pizza Parlour

Teach Beside Me- Inside a House That is Haunted- Haunted House Craft
One Time Through- Magic School Bus: Haunted Museum- Spooky Sound Experiments

Bare Feet on the Dashboard- Curious George Goes to a Costume Party- Costumes and Pretend Play

Where Imagination Grows- 5 Little Ghosts- Ghost Collages

Fireflies and Mud Pies- Scary Scary Halloween- Halloween Necklace Craft

Artsy Momma- Pippa the Pumpkin Fairy- Pumpkin Wand and Pumpkin Crafts

Royal Baloo- AlphaOops- Halloween Letter Puppets

Rubberboots and Elf Shoes- Skeleton Hiccups- Paper Chain Skeleton

P is for Preschooler- Clifford's Halloween- Cotton Ball Ghost Craft

Little Bins For Little Hands- ABCs of Halloween- Sensory Bin

Mama Miss- Sheep Trick-or-Treat- Sheep Craft, Activity, and Snack

Pink Stripey Socks- Scaredy-Cay Splat the Cat- Spider Costume

Fun-A-Day!- Big Pumpkin- Sequencing Activity

Line Upon Line Learning- The Spooky Old Tree- Prepositions Game

Kitchen Floor Crafts- Pumpkin Eye- Halloween Sticky Collage

Coffee Cups and Cratons- Spookley the Square Pumpkin- Glitter Pumpkin Sun Catchers

Wise Owl Factory- Bunnicula and others- Halloween Book Fun Learning Round Up
Planet Smarty Pants- The Picky Little Witch- Halloween Cupcakes
Study at Home Mama- 10 Halloween Books and 50 Activities

Don't forget to check out the Halloween Read and Play Pinterest Board which features ALL these great activities!