It’s that time of year again! Spooky season is upon us and what better than to celebrate with a spooky book exploration? There are a whole lot of spooky kids' books out there, and there’s nothing like a bit of grotesquerie to spark kids' imaginations. Kids love talking about icky, sticky, gooey, oozy, creepy, crawly things and I always got the best writing from my class with a spine-tingling story. In this article, I’ll be sharing one of my favourite tales I used to use in Primary school for encouraging reading, writing and widening children’s vocabulary. 

You may have heard of The Frog Prince, but have you heard of The Frog Prince, Continued? Written by Jon Scieszka, it’s a story about what happens after the frog kisses the princess—and they don’t live quite so happily ever after, after all.

If you get your hands on a copy, you’ll see the most weird and wonderful pictures by the illustrator, Steve Johnson. Steve has done a wonderful job of making the witches in the story varied (and all cute and creepy in their own way) and the author, Jon Scieszka, didn’t write any descriptions of the witches, so these were always the best for class discussion. 

I’d start by reading the story as an introduction, then stop as we got to the first witch page. As a prompt for discussion, I’d use each illustration of a witch to prompt an ‘adjective harvest’, getting the kids to describe the witch's features and then prompting them to uncover more vocabulary. 

For example, if a child described the witch's lips as ‘slimy’, we’d ask “How slimy?” or “Slimy as a…” to prompt similes (a figure of speech comparing one thing with another thing of a different kind, used to make a description more interesting). I could also ask them to extend the sentence “The witch’s lips were so slimy that...” or “When the boy looked at the witch’s slimy lips…”

Once the class had gathered all the adjectives and similes it could, and wrote them up on the board for our ‘word bank’, we’d move on to writing a description of our witch. This same word bank could be used for their own spooky stories, from werewolves to ghosts, goblins and ghouls. The results of these classes were some of the best writing the kids had ever produced, and were a lot of fun too! 

So this Halloween, why not try an ‘adjective harvest’ with your class or kid at home? Get a spooky book, read it together and get describing! If you have our game Reading for Fun, check out ‘The Ghostly Galleon’, it’s a great one for getting those spooky juices flowing!

Kay Leathers
A freelance consultant for Teach Your Monster and ex-primary school teacher!

Photo by Drew Perales on Unsplash