storytime katie

Quite a few weeks ago (nearly a month!), I did a Kids’ Art for Dr. Seuss’s birthday. (Kids’ Art is my cleverly disguised storytime with a large art project for ages 3-7.) While we wait for the paint to dry, I read a couple of books, occasionally sing songs/do rhymes, and play games. This month, our game was this amazing flannelboard game:

I originally got this idea from Smashed Peas and Carrots, via Pinterest. We rolled a giant inflatable dice to build our Lorax and this was the runaway hit of the program. Afterwards, I had moms asking me for the pattern to make at home!

—

Cate 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.

This flannelboard has been a labor of love. I started working on this in August, during some downtime. After doing one car just plain out of felt, I decided I really wanted to re-learn how to embroider. So, this became my guinea pig. My goal was to have it finished by the new year!

I got this template from KizClub and it’s the pattern for “Freight Train.” I added most, but not all, of the details to the cars. Since I did so much sewing, I wound up backing each piece with a piece of black felt so that the knots were glued down and hidden away if/when the preschoolers handle this one.

While you can substitute these pieces for the book, I wanted to use them as a rhyme and Melissa gave me the perfect opportunity when she posted her rhyme “Clickety Clack.”

Clickety-clack, clickety-clack,
Here comes the train on the railroad track!
Clickety-clunn, clickety-clunn,
Here comes ENGINE number one.
Clickety-clew, clickety-clew,
Here comes COAL CAR number two.
Clickety-clee, clickety-clee,
Here comes BOX CAR number three.
Clickety-clore, clickety-clore,
Here comes TANK CAR number four.
Clickety-clive, clickety-clive,
Here comes COACH CAR number five.
Clickety-clicks, clickety-clicks,
Here’s the CABOOSE, that’s number six.
Clickety-clack, clickety-clack,
There goes the train on the railroad track!
Choo-choooooooo! Goodbye!

And I also found another rhyme that doesn’t use all the cars, but still works on SurLaLune Storytime:

Flannel Board
This Little Train
(Sung to: “This Old Man”)

This little train, painted black
It comes chugging down the track
With a “Choo-choo; Toot-toot”
Hear the whistle blow
This little train goes chugging home.

This little car painted blue
It has seats for me and you
With a “Choo-choo; Toot-toot”
Hear the whistle blow
This little train goes chugging home.

This little car painted yellow
It shimmies and shakes like a bowl of jello
With a “Choo-choo; Toot-toot”
Hear the whistle blow
This little train goes chugging home.

This little car, painted green
It’s the fanciest car you’ve seen,
With a “Choo-choo; Toot-toot”
Hear the whistle blow
This little train goes chugging home.

This caboose; it is red
It will take you home to bed
With a “Choo-choo; Toot-toot”
Hear the whistle blow
This little train goes chugging home.

So there you go — multiple options to use the same pieces for any trains/things that go storytime!

—

Linda 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.

This Flannel Friday was inspired by this pin of sweet felt Valentines and Meghan of Busy Crafting Mommy who wrote the wonderful rhyme with her co-worker Elizabeth!

[And I feel like it was brought to you by the letter V. Just so you know.]

I cut apart an envelope from the library and used that as my template. All the stitching was free-hand, as was the stamp cutting from scraps! Inside the envelopes, I opted for laminated animals so that they would slide out of their felt envelopes easier. I plan on sewing snaps to close the envelopes at some point, but my Michaels did not have the size I needed this week.

These were a huge success and here’s the rhyme that I used with them:

Six little Valentines were sent to my house,
The first one said, “I love you, From Mouse.”
Five little Valentines in my mailbox,
The second one said, “Be mine, Love Fox.”
Four little Valentines full of love,
The third one said, “You are sweet, From Dove.”
Three little Valentines just for me,
The fourth one said, “Be my honey, Love Bee.”
Two little Valentine’s mailed with care,
The fifth one said, “Here’s a hug, From Bear.”
The last little Valentine, from my friend Jay,
This one said, “Happy Valentine’s Day!”

—

I am hosting this week’s Flannel Friday — you can find the round-up here at Storytime Katie! 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.

For “Imagination” storytime, I made a flannel of the book “It Looked Like Spilt Milk.”

I got the template from Kizclub. Instead of telling the storytime, I put up the pieces on the board and had the kids guess. I did use the refrain, “But it wasn’t ice cream,” after they had all gotten their guesses out. They had a lot of fun with this one!

—

Meghan 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.

[Edited to add: I cannot upload these puzzles, as I do not have the right to distribute Microsoft Office clipart. They are fairly easy to make; give it a try! My apologies for not being able to help more!]

A few weeks back, I started doing outreach storytime to some local daycares. These are the daycares that walk over to the library during the nice weather seasons (April though October), and I really wanted to continue doing storytimes for them even during our off-weather-season.

Since I’m doing the storytimes in different rooms (three different rooms), have only crayons or glue as supplies available, am doing different age groups instead of an all-ages storytime, and I don’t have my flannelboard easel or shelf or seats or a thousand other things — I decided to do an alphabet series only for my outreach kids. (That way I can be more flexible and change things up easier than sticking to a more rigid theme!)

Like I did with my colors series, I wanted to repeat a flannelboard activity from week to week. I settled on making letter puzzles with the kids.

These are really easy flannelboards to put together, as they are just laminated and sticky-back felt is put on the back. Also, I love that they reinforce the different things we might have talked about in storytime as well as the shape of the letter.

I probably won’t be posting any more of these (at least for Flannel Friday!), but I will perhaps post a compilation when I have all the letters done.

—

Katie 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.

My second flannelboard for Sick/Get Well storytime came from Melissa on Twitter! I crowd-sourced and needed a flannelboard (as we know from last week, I did wind up using two) idea for this theme. Melissa suggested having kids bring up band-aids to an animal on the flannelboard. I turned this around slightly and decided to use Applesauce, our storytime mascot, to model the band-aids.

I called the kids up by color and specifically told them where to put their band-aids, ie, “Oh, no! Applesauce’s paw hurts! Please put a band-aid there to help him feel better!” This was a hit, and afterwards, Applesauce shook off all his band-aids and felt all better.

—

Library Quine 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.

For sick storytime, I decided to make a felt doctor bag in the style of the toolbox flannel I made this summer. I used the template from the toolbox, which originally came from Serving Pink Lemonade for the doctor’s bag. As for the doctor’s tools, I did a Google clip art search and made my pieces from there.

And you can see the tools inside of the bag in this picture:

With this flannel, we talked about what each tool was called and what it was used for. The kids pointed to the parts on their body that corresponded. After storytime and craft, they played with the board pieces! This wasn’t too time-consuming (my sewing skills are getting better and better!), and it was a great investment to make for my flannelboard collection!

—

Andrea 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.

I used this flannel in Snow storytime (summary post coming Monday!) back in December when Chicago was having a no-snow winter. We have since had some snow! Anyway, the rhyme went off like gangbusters and this is definitely one I will be repeating.

Flannelboard: “Five Little Snowflakes”
One little snowflake with nothing to do,
Along came another and then there were…two!
Two little snowflakes laughing with me,
Along came another and then there were…three!
Three little snowflakes looking for some more,
Along came another and then there were…four!
Four little snowflakes dancing a jive,
Along came another and then there were…five!
Five little snowflakes, having so much fun!
Out came the sun, and then there were none!

I did not make a sun piece, but instead grabbed my piece from “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” set and it worked just fine! And yes, I learned how to chain stitch for this flannel!

It’s my goal to learn a whole ton of embroidery this year. So far, I’ve done three stitches (chain, blanket, and french knots) — does anyone have any new suggestions?

—

Kay has challenged us (via our Facebook page) to comment on every Flannel Friday submission this week! I’m totally in, and furthermore, I will respond to every comment on my own page if you want to start up a great discussion! Let’s do this!

—

Anne is hosting this week’s Flannel Friday — you can find the round-up at her blog! Melissa is the founder of Flannel Friday! Anne also 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.

Another inspired by Flannel Friday post — this idea originally came from Mary, but I know that Library Quine and Shawn have done some of their own as well. (And probably other people — apologies if I missed you! Leave a comment and I’ll edit the post!)

I used this set in “Snow” storytime (post upcoming, I promise!) to great success. I had 21 kids at this storytime, so I did wind up having to hand out both sets. I had kids come up as I called “green mitten with star” or “blue mitten with heart” and they found their matches. A lot of my young kids needed help with the clothespins, so I did that part for them.

As for the mitten template, I used an Ellison die-cut since I knew I would be making forty mittens! The shapes I just made in a Publisher document and printed them out so they were consistent.

Melissa is hosting the round-up this week and is the founder of Flannel Friday! Anne also 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.

This is a flannelboard that I used last year during my “Love” theme and didn’t post! (It was before Flannel Friday, after all!)

I used this song, to the tune of “BINGO:”

“H-E-A-R-T”
There is a shape and it means love
And heart is its name-o.
H-E-A-R-T, H-E-A-R-T, H-E-A-R-T,
And heart is its name-o!
Credit: Everything Preschool

This worked pretty well; my kids were familiar with “BINGO” so it wasn’t too hard to change it up a bit!

—

Anna 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.