Fun Whole Body Listening Activity for the Beginning of the School Year

I love starting the school year with monster themed lessons.  There is an ActiveBoard lesson called Little Monster Goes to School and it is a perfect story for talking about good classroom behavior.  I like to extend this lesson by teaching students active listening.  I couldn't believe it when I found this monster stuffed animal a couple years ago, because all his body parts are attached to his body with Velcro and can easily be taken off and put back on. Click here to download the posters from "Growing Kinders" at TeachersPayTeachers for free!

We start with the body of the monster and I hold the poster up and ask students, "A monster can listen with his body. Can you?" Then, students tell me how they use their bodies to show active listening. Next, I hold up the eye and stick it on the monster, saying "A monster can listen with his eyes. Can you?" Then I continue going through all the parts of the body that monsters ( and kids) use to show active listening to their teacher and classmates.  The children absolutely love this lesson because the monster looks so funny! If you can't find a monster like this one, you could use a potato head toy.

Finally, I have students work together with their teams to draw the parts of the body they use for active listening on these laminated monster activity pages. One at a time they are supposed to draw one body part and explain to their team how they use that body part to show active listening. Then, they pass it on to the next person and they add a body part, and so on.  After all the teams finish, it's fun to have them share their monsters with the class. They always turn out very cute!