Betsy Howie (1962–2022)

This book is about a little girl name Calpurnia. Her mom asks her to clean her room. But she is afraid the block mess monster doesn’t want her to clean up. Her mom insists that she does because she wants to vacuum up her room. So she and her mom go back and forth on different idea for her to clean up the block mess monster. And of course none of those ideas work. But by the end of the story she does find a way to clean up her room.

The children loved this story. This story was read to a group of three year olds. When Calpurnia was trying the different ways her mother advised her to clean her room. They just couldn’t understand why none of the idea works. I had a few children say just pick the block up. But by the end of the story all came to light. Reading with a little emotion gets them every time.

After reading this book we did two block activities. One is where I gave them a picture of something (example a butterfly) and they had to use the different shapes to make the same picture on the table. Then I pored about 2 buckets of different color blocks on the floor and the children had to make there own block mess monster. Which was great, but of course no one wanted to clean up.… (meer)