Flannel Friday: Coconut Tree & Monkeys

Can’t resist a tree full of monkeys!

I made these felt sets for my recent ABC Baby Storytime. First I made a Chicka Chicka Tree, with different shaped coconuts:

You could make a dozen of each shape coconuts, and hand one out to all the kids, then have the kids bring up all the triangles, then all the squares, and so forth. Or you could put all the coconuts in the tree, and have the kids come up and pick a coconut, then sort them into little baskets by shape.

I just now had the idea (so there are no photos!) to make little rectangles in different colors, and print one letter of the alphabet on each of them (instead of trying to cut out tiny alphabets from felt to make it look like the book). If your group were small enough, and you knew the names of your kids, you could put the first letter of each of their names in the tree, and have them come and find their letter. Or with older preschoolers you could put the letters of the word “monkey” in the tree, and sound out the word and decide together each letter in the word in sequence.

ANYWAY.

To make the leaves, I looked at the title page of Chicka Chicka Boom Boom and freehanded similar jaggy palm leaves. I don’t have a pattern for you, but you can see the individual leaves here. Each leaf fills up most of a 9 x 12 sheet of felt, to give you a sense of scale.