Mel's Desk

Again this week I don’t have an actual flannel. I was planning a Horses & Cows storytime for during the Stock Show in January, and found this in my files! Completely forgot about it!

I made it to have something to hold while I sang a few verses of “She’ll Be Comin’ Round the Mountain” with the babies in storytime. I sing the first verse with the prop folded up in my lap. Then I sing, “She’ll be drivin’ six white horses,” and unfold the prop so that the horses are showing. Then I fold it up, turn it around, and open it up again to the other side, and sing, “We’ll all go out to meet her when she comes.” That’s it! Something a little different for the babies to look at while we sing.

The prop is six inches high and 36 inches wide, which makes each panel about 6×6″. It’s made up out of 2 6×18″ panels held together with a 6×12″ panel in the middle. Here’s a sketch looking from the top down:

The images are all clip art from Microsoft Word.

I’m thinking this might be fun to try for some of those cumulative songs, like “I Know An Old Lady” or “Fiddle-I-Fee.” You could unfold them panel by panel as you sang each verse, and everyone would have the pictures to help remember the order of the song!

Flannel Friday info for the week:
Linda is hosting this week at Notes from the Story Room. (For the first time? Hooray!)

Don’t forget we are taking a winter break and there will be NO Flannel Friday round ups on the 23rd or the 30th!

Round up archives and host schedule is at So Tomorrow.

Visually scan all the Flannel Friday posts at Pinterest.

Talk about storytime and flannelboards at the Flannel Friday Facebook Page.

Follow Flannel Friday on Twitter with the #flannelfriday hashtag. (You don’t have to be on Twitter to check this out.)

Last but not least, if you’re a contributer, grab the blog button in the right hand menu here at Mel’s Desk!

I have another Storytime Paper Towel Tube Song Prop Thingy to share! The last one was for 5 Green and Speckled Frogs, and ever since I found this 5 Little Nails rhyme in our Build It storytime resource pack, I knew I wanted to make a prop for it, too.

Five Little Nails

Five little nails, standing straight and steady.
Here I come with my hammer ready!
Bam Bam Bam! That nail goes down.
Now there’s just four nails to pound.

Obviously you can do this as a fingerplay, with your five fingers standing up as the nails, and your fist gently bouncing off the top of your fingers one by one as you bang them down.

But I finally made it into a prop! I spent a little time waffling on whether to use a photo image or not for the nails, but I didn’t find one I liked in free clip art and taking my own photo and editing turned out to be too much of a hassle. In the end I just cut construction paper shapes and I think it looks just great.

Check out the earlier post for step-by-step instructions, or check out “tube stories” in some of the Irving/Currie storytime idea books for more info. (Be careful Googling, though, my dears, I didn’t find any other examples online and apparently “tube stories” is a little NSFW!)

Here’s the prop in process. I just cut nail shapes out of gray construction paper, then used a dark gray colored pencil to add a little shadow on the point of the nail, and a little shadow under the rim of the nailhead. The wood grain paper is a leftover from my stay-at-home-mom scrapbooking days. I took a quick look at Michael’s to see what was currently available, and didn’t see any as nice as this, but a scrapbooking store like Archiver’s might have some better choices. Of course you can just do brown construction paper, or do brown kraft paper and add your own “grain” lines with colored pencil. I really like how the patterned paper looks, though!

And in post-op:

Here’s the finished piece, with all the nails up:

And with some of them down:

Here’s your Flannel Friday rundown for the week:

Mrs D is hosting this week, I believe for the very first time (yay!), at putting smiles on faces.

Don’t forget we are taking a winter break and there will be NO Flannel Friday round ups on the 23rd or the 30th!

Round up archives and host schedule is at So Tomorrow.

Visually scan all the Flannel Friday posts at Pinterest.

Talk about storytime and flannelboards at the Flannel Friday Facebook Page.

Follow Flannel Friday on Twitter with the #flannelfriday hashtag. (You don’t have to be on Twitter to check this out.)

Last but not least, if you’re a contributer, grab the blog button in the right hand menu here at Mel’s Desk!

Happy December! Here are some colorful homemade “clip art” ornaments to decorate your flannelboard.

When I use clip art, I laminate it sandwiched with cardstock, and attach a velcro button on the back.

Print out multiple copies, enough so that everyone in your group may have one or two pieces. Hand them out, and if you like, ask the kids to talk to their grownups about what color their ornament is, or what shapes are decorating it.

You can say, “When we decorate a tree, we put the ornaments on the branches. But we don’t have branches! Where should we put our ornaments? Should we put our ornament…on our NOSE? How about on our TUMMY?”

Instead of playing that game, you can ask everyone with a red ornament to come put it on the board, then blue, etc. You could say this rhyme first:

Way up high on the Christmas tree
A colorful ornament I did see
Shiny and round and pretty as could be
Bring all the red ornaments up to me

Here’s the pdf file.

For other ideas about how to use this set, check out my Color & Counting post!

Library Quine is hosting our Holiday Extravaganza today from her blog in Scotland! Post your link on Twitter with @Library_Quine or leave the link at her blog Loons and Quines at Librarytime!

Round up archives and host schedule is at So Tomorrow. Visually scan all the Flannel Friday posts at Pinterest. Talk about storytime and flannelboards at the Flannel Friday Facebook Page. Follow Flannel Friday on Twitter with the #flannelfriday hashtag. (You don’t have to be on Twitter to check this out.) Last but not least, if you’re a contributer, grab the blog button in the right hand menu here at Mel’s Desk!

Happy Thanksgiving! I want to start this week by telling you all how grateful I am for the Flannel Friday community. You guys make my life richer and my work much more fun. Thank you for the generosity of spirit and time and talent that you share with us all every week. You’re so cool.

This week my post is kind of thrown together and I may come back with a part II when I have some more examples to show. Ever since I made my Catkin set a few weeks ago, I have been having fun playing with my needles and thread and learning new embroidery stitches.

Yesterday, in between making the cranberry sauce and mashing the potatoes, I was noodling around with the idea of making little dolls for my nieces for Christmas. My sister’s kids are Waldorf kids, and I have fallen in love with Waldorf toys. So here I am, stitching away at a little felt doll, thinking, “Hmmm. I still don’t have a Flannel Friday for tomorrow. I wonder what I should try to pull together?”

*Insert light bulb here*

One of the reasons I shy away from adapting folktales or picture books to the flannelboard is that making people out of felt is a pain in the neck! But these little dolls made me realize that simple, essential shapes can sometimes do the trick, too.

These dolls are made out of two arch-shapes sewn together and stuffed, then with an oval shape sewn onto the bottom. I put some dried beans in the lower part of the dolls to help weight them and help them stand up. The faces are just a circle, and can be as simple or as complex as you wish. (Steiner/Waldorf dolls tend to have no faces or very simple faces, so that children can project any emotion to the doll as they play. The doll with braids I made for my 10 year old, and she asked for a few more details!)

What I was thinking was that these arch shapes, with just a few details, can work as people in a lot of folktales: a red triangle on top of one face could make Red Riding Hood, or a bit of grey hair could be her grandmother. Instead of round people faces, you could make a triangle shape with pointy ears for a wolf, or an oval shape with round ears for a bear. I sewed the pieces together and embroidered their faces & flowers, but you could use glue and markers just as easily.

You could just make a one-layer shape to use on the flannel board, or glue or sew 2 layers together, for finger puppets. (I’d make a flannelboard piece or a finger puppet a little narrower than this doll.)

Making the stuffed dolls would be a fun thing to get out if you have free play time after storytime, or you could leave a Goldilocks or Three Pigs set out on a table in the children’s room for families to use for open-ended play during their visit.

We are really fortunate at my library to be able to purchase a lot of wonderful toys for our Learning through Play time after storytime, and to keep out in our children’s areas. I have been thinking lately, though, that I would love to also set out some handmade toys or play pieces, as a way to show parents that they don’t have to spend a lot of money to provide their children with rich play experiences.

I will keep experimenting with these felt people shapes and report back, maybe with some patterns for you to use!

If you’re curious, here are some of my inspirations for these little dolls:

Felt Toadstools from Twig and Toadstool (thanks Seth!)
Pebble Pouch Babies from Australian children’s author Anna Branford
Futuregirl’s posts about felt stuffies and other creations

Flannel Friday info:

The round up this week is on Katie’s blog Story Time Secrets. Thanks Katie for taking this on over the holiday weekend!

Round up archives and host schedule is at So Tomorrow. Visually scan all the Flannel Friday posts at Pinterest. Talk about storytime and flannelboards at the Flannel Friday Facebook Page. Follow Flannel Friday on Twitter with the #flannelfriday hashtag. (You don’t have to be on Twitter to check this out.) Last but not least, if you’re a contributer, grab the blog button in the right hand menu here at Mel’s Desk!

I did not have a Flannel Friday idea until about 9:30pm last night, so three cheers for last-minute inspiration from brilliant colleagues!

Yesterday we had one of our Storytime Practicums at my library, where storytime providers from all over the district may request time to attend a mini-training and sharing & inspiration session. We meet 3 times a year and I am always so amazed and grateful for the fellowship, conversations, and for all the fresh ideas.

My colleague Jan showed us how she started with the familiar Miss Mouse, Miss Mouse, Are You in the Red House flannelboard activity. She would use a flannel mouse that fit entirely behind the house shape and would name each color house as she went along. She realized, though, that of course babies and young toddlers don’t know their colors yet, and then had the idea to adapt the activity for this age group by making a much larger mouse. This way when she tucks the mouse behind a house, parts of the mouse’s ears and tail and feet stick out–which creates a much more developmentally appropriate visual challenge for the young toddlers.

LOVE.

One of the flannels that I have been planning to make and use next month was a Very Hungry Caterpillar set. I thought I’d make the five fruits that the caterpillar nibbles through, and after I read the book we could sing Down Around the Corner and go to a fruit stand. When I got out the book to start making the patterns, though, I realized that I could make a Very Hungry Caterpillar version of Jan’s idea!

Okay, so HOW CUTE is this? I can’t wait to use this with my babies.

Here’s some notes:

The pear is six inches top to bottom not counting the stem; the VHC is about 3×5. I traced a shape for each type of fruit from the illustrations, then enlarged them on the photocopier.

The great thing about this flannel is that you shouldn’t be perfect if you want to capture the cut-paper feel of Eric Carle’s art.

To make the VHC body, I cut a green rectangle the size I wanted the body to be, then started cutting away the parts I didn’t want, but you could also trace an illustration to make a pattern as well.

The eyes actually took longer than the body to get right–I cut several sizes of yellow eyes and green pupils until I was satisfied.

My real camera’s battery was dead so I used my phone to take these pictures, and the color does not look as cheery as it does in real life. The apple especially should look like it’s a nice dark red instead of as if it were rotting on the tree!

I could make a leaf, a cocoon, and a butterfly and use all these pieces to tell an abbreviated version of the story.

Thank you, Jan!

AND I learned this week that the inspiration for last week’s Flannel Friday was developed, created, and added to our Build It storytime kit by my colleague Julie! Julie’s the one who shared her shoebox-and-clothespin Storybox idea with us this past summer. Thank you, Julie!

Flannel Friday info is below.

The round up this week is on Cate’s blog Storytiming. Cate is asking for folks to add their link to her wall post on the Flannel Friday Facebook page until she can get the round up post live on her blog later today. If you are not on Facebook but would like to participate, you can leave your link in the comments of THIS post and I will make sure she gets your contribution! If you are on Twitter, post your link, and use the #flannelfriday hashtag and also @storytimingcate.

Round up archives and host schedule is at So Tomorrow. Visually scan all the Flannel Friday posts at Pinterest. Talk about storytime and flannelboards at the Flannel Friday Facebook Page. Follow Flannel Friday on Twitter with the #flannelfriday hashtag. (You don’t have to be on Twitter to check this out.) Last but not least, if you’re a contributer, grab the blog button in the right hand menu here at Mel’s Desk!