Month: May 2012

Letter J!

The Plan

Books

Dinosaur Jokes by Pam Rosenberg
If You’re Happy and You Know It by James Warhola
Jellyfish by Carol K. Lindeen
Joey and Jet by James Yang
Jump! by Scott Fischer

Extension Activities

Flannelboard: “Seals on the Bus”

Flannelboard Puzzle: “Letter J”

Fingerplay: “Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed”
Five little monkeys jumping on the bed
One fell off and bumped his head
Mama called the Doctor and the Doctor said,
“No more monkeys jumping on the bed!”
(Countdown)
Credit: Childhood

Song: “Peanut Butter and Jelly”
First you take the peanuts and you crunch ‘em, you crunch ‘em
First you take the peanuts and you crunch ‘em, you crunch ‘em
For your peanut, peanut butter and jelly
Peanut, peanut butter and jelly
(Grapes/Squish ‘em; Bread/Spread it; Sandwich/Eat it)
Credit: Childhood

Craft

This was a super simple craft; I ordered some jungle foam stickers and the kids went to town. The very funniest part was when they discovered dolphins and penguins in the stickers and told me that they didn’t belong! I agreed on the penguin part, but did let them know about the Amazon River dolphin!

How It Went

A super hard letter! I really enjoyed the challenge of trying to find Letter J books and activities. The kids were SO grossed out by the jellyfish; every time I turned a page they screamed “ewwww.” Again, I really like using non-fiction with this group and they like seeing the photos as well. The best book was probably “If You’re Happy and You Know It: Jungle Edition” and you know why — they got to pretend to be jungle animals, which is the very best thing in the world if you’re a kid!

May 9, 2012 1 Comment Short URL, Outreach Storytime

Exciting Flannel Friday Announcement!

I am pleased to post this announcement, along with many other amazing bloggers this morning. Flannel Friday is one of my favorite parts of the week and I’m happy to see how much it keeps growing!

Exciting news for Flannel Friday!

Introducing the Flannel Friday website!

As you know, Anne at So Tomorrow has been an amazing manager and archiver of Flannel Friday information for the past year. Anne and her husband are expecting their first baby in June (congratulations Anne!) so we wanted to give her a break from Flannel Friday during her maternity leave. So this spring, Anne and Mel from Mel’s Desk and a small group of old and new Flannel Friday-ers worked to create a new web home for Flannel Friday.

Here’s the link! http://flannelfridaystorytime.blogspot.com

The new site will be the home of the Round Up Schedule, the archives, FAQs about Flannel Friday, information about how to get involved with Flannel Friday, and links to help new members get started with social networking and blogging. There will also be a link to the week’s Round Up, but the Round Up will continue to be hosted on individual blogs. We’ll just point to each Round Up from the site.

Refining the Round Up Procedure

The Flannel Friday community has grown continuously over the year, with new bloggers, new Round Up Hosts, and new members every week on Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. We are building an amazing community and are grateful to each and every one of you for your participation and enthusiasm. As the group has grown, you’ve probably noticed that so have the Round Ups! We’ve seen an inevitable increase in missed links and general confusion as the Round Ups are compiled. We thought that the launch of the new site was a great opportunity to take a page from other round ups in the blogosphere and establish one single method for building the Round Up each week.

This information will be in the FAQs on the new site, but here’s our new strategy in a nutshell:

Every week the Round Up Host will publish a “placeholder” post for the Round Up on the host blog at 10pm EST on Thursday.
Each blogger who wants to participate in the Round Up will make a comment to the Round Up post with the link back to their Flannel Friday post by 10pm EST on Friday.
This will be the only place to post links for the Round Up! This way the Host won’t have to worry about checking Facebook or Twitter as well.
If a blogger can’t make the 10pm EST deadline on Friday, we’ll ask that the post be held for the next week’s Round Up.
The Round Up Host will gather links from the Round Up post comments throughout the day, and publish the Round Up at the end of the day.

We hope this will make the Round Ups easier to create and easier to contribute to! We’ll look forward to your feedback over the next few weeks. Sharon / @ReadingChick at Rain Makes Applesauce has the Round Up this week, 5/11, so she’s going to try out the new procedure with us and see how it goes!

If you have questions or comments, don’t hesitate to share them via the new Flannel Friday email: flannelboardfriday [at] gmail.com.

Thanks for all you do to to make Flannel Friday more than a blog event–but a great community too. Here’s to the next great year of Flannel Friday!

May 7, 2012 0 Comments Short URLAnnouncements

Spring!

The Plan

Books

I See Spring by Charles Ghigna
Little White Rabbit by Kevin Henkes
Mouse’s First Spring by Lauren Thompson
Peek-a-Bloom by Marie Cimarusti
Split Splat by Amy Gibson

Extension Activities

Flannelboard: “Five Little Kites”
One little kite in the sky so blue,
Along came another, then there were two.
Two little kites flying high above me;
Along came another, then there were three.
Three little kites, just watch them soar,
Along came another, then there were four.
Four little kites, so high and alive
Along came another, then there were five.
Five little kites dancing across the sky,
What a sight to see, way up so high!

Puppets/Fingerplay: “Five Little Bunnies”
Hippety hop and hippety hay,
Five little bunnies went out to play.
Hippety hop and hippety hay,
One little bunny hopped away.
(Count down…No more bunnies are playing today, I hope they come back another day.)

Action Rhyme: “The Rain Is Falling Down”
The rain is falling down (flutter fingers down)
SPLASH! (clap once loudly)
Pitter patter pitter patter (tap legs softly)
The rain is falling down (flutter fingers down)
SPLASH! (clap once loudly)
Pitter patter pitter patter (tap legs softly)
[Repeat until kids are worn out.]
Credit: King County Library System

Fingerplay: “Itsy Bitsy Spider”
Credit: Childhood

Craft

This was an Oriental Trading purchase. I love their tissue paper collages. (I have a campfire one for summer and a mitten one for next winter already purchased.)

How It Went

This was a surprise storytime! We do program reminders at my library and my co-worker forgot to call the night before to remind everyone about the program. So I was super bummed that storytime wasn’t going to happen. Well, six families (with a total of 11 kids) remembered to come on their own — hooray! I had to run down and quickly set up, but it was well worth it. The kids had a great time with the theme and they LOVED the butterfly craft!

May 7, 2012 8 Comments Short URL, , Family Storytime

Flannel Friday: Cookies!

This week Flannel Friday is brought to you by this amazing blog post from Ikatbag (found via Pinterest) and a fabulous rhyme from Melissa!

I used this in Jobs storytime, and I plan to use it when I do a sweets-themed program. And who knows when else?

First, I did pat-a-cake and rolled out the flannel pieces on the board. Afterwards the kids and I “frosted” our flannel and make-believe cookies to sell in our shop, which led us to our rhyme:

Down around the corner in the bakery shop
Were five little cookies with sprinkles on top…
Along came someone with a nickel to pay
And they bought a little cookie and they took it away.

This was a great rhyme to use and the kids really enjoyed the interactive portion of the flannel. It was a LOT of work, but again it’s something that I really enjoy doing in my spare time, so I’m not bothered at all by a lot of work!

—

Mollie is hosting this week’s Flannel Friday — you can find the round-up at her blog! Melissa is the founder of Flannel Friday! Anne has the archive and schedule of who is hosting Flannel Friday.

And you can also follow the Flannel Friday Pinterest account. And Flannel Friday has its own Facebook page! If you participate in Flannel Friday, Melissa has a button if you want to link up to us here.

May 4, 2012 15 Comments Short URLFlannels

Letter I!

The Plan

Books

I Love Bugs! by Emma Dodd
Isaac the Ice Cream Truck by Scott Santoro
An Island in the Sun by Stella Blackstone
Look Inside an Igloo by Mari Schuh
Mañana Iguana by Ann Whitford Paul

Extension Activities

Flannelboard: “Ice Cream Colors”
We have ice cream, the best in town,
Let us begin with chocolate brown.
Now, let us scoop us some bubble-gum pink,
It is sweet and yummy, the best, some think.
Here is ice cream minty and green,
It is the creamiest I have ever seen.
Yellow ice cream is lemony and tart,
We like its taste from the very start.
Scoops of blueberry would make my day,
Look at all this ice cream, hip, hip hurray!
Red ice cream is a strawberry delight,
All these scoops are a heavenly sight.
Vanilla white is a popular flavor,
It tastes very good to an ice-cream craver.
Purple ice cream really gives me a kick,
Good and yummy till the very last lick.
Ice cream, ice cream, what a cool sensation,
We love ice cream in any combination!

Flannelboard Puzzle: “Letter I”

Fingerplay: “Itsy Bitsy Spider”
The itsy bitsy spider went up the waterspout
Down came the rain and washed the spider out
Out came the sun and dried up all the rain
And the itsy bitsy spider went up the spout again
(Great big hairy spider, teensy weensy spider)
Credit: Childhood

Craft

I got the idea for this craft (and used their printables) from First School. Teen volunteers again cut everything out and had everything glued down for the daycare. The kids spent their time coloring and making up flavor combinations. I had a lot of rainbow-flavored ice cream cones!

How It Went

With some of the harder letters, I’ve been pulling some of the Pebble Book non-fiction from our collection. I sometimes skip pages and tend to skim over any complicated parts, but I love letting the kids see some photograph-based books. Igloos BLEW their minds! Also, this was the first opportunity I’ve had to read “Mañana Iguana” and it is my very favorite new storytime book! I’ve read it four more times since this storytime.

May 2, 2012 3 Comments Short URL, Outreach Storytime

Newer Entries