Mel's Desk

I am taking a break from Fall flannelboards this week in order to help out a reader who is looking for princess or knight flannels for a storytime she’s planning! (Hi Toni!)

I have adapted “There’s a Hole in the Middle of the Road” several times to different themes, and it’s usually a quick and easy way to add some content to a particular storytime. (see “There’s a Parade in the Middle of the Street” from this summer.) In this case we sing about castles!

Here's the Castle flannel set. Here you can also see what 20 years of crafting has done to my kitchen table.

There’s a Castle in the Middle of the Moat

There’s a castle in the middle of the moat
There’s a castle in the middle of the moat
There’s a castle, there’s a castle,
There’s a castle in the middle of the moat.

There’s a throne in the castle in the middle of the moat…
There’s a cushion on the throne in the castle in the middle of the moat…
There’s a crown on the cushion on the throne in the castle in the middle of the moat…
Don’t sit on it!

If you really really wanted to sing about a princess, then you could sing, “There’s a crown* on the princess in the castle in the middle of the moat.” OR! “There’s a FROG on** the princess in the castle in the middle of the moat / Kiss it!”

*Remember you can add as many verses as you want. There can be a jewel on the crown and some glitter on the jewel if you feel up to it!

**This seems so irresistably silly. But you could sing “There’s a frog WITH the princess” instead. (OR! Add: “There’s some lips on the frog with the princess in the castle…” Hee hee.)

Castle in the Moat Flannel Patterns (pdf)
Notes on the patterns: They are all my original designs EXCEPT the princess, which is based on Joan Hilyer Phelp’s ballerina finger puppet pattern in her book FingerTales. I did not include a pattern for the moat; just make a big blue oval. There are two sizes of lips, the bigger if you just want to put all the pieces up on the board individually as you sing, the smaller if you want to put that kisser right on the frog. The cushion has two layers, the bottom layer has the tassels. Eventually I will learn to get ALL my notes on the pattern page instead of just some.

Also check out Anne’s flannelboard for A Blanket for the Princess.

Lisa at the Storytime Source Page has a short list of picture books that would translate well to the flannelboard.

What about you guys? Do you have anything about princesses or knights in your files? Share a link in the comments if you do!

This week’s Flannel Friday round up is over at the lovely and talented Mollie’s blog, What Happens In Storytime… Go visit! Remember Anne keeps us all organized at So Tomorrow: Flannel Friday. Check out the hosting schedule and find all the links to past round ups there!

Yay for Friday! Yay for Tracey who is hosting Flannel Friday over at her blog 1234 More Storytimes!

Just like last week’s oak leaves, this week’s post was inspired by our Flannelboard Inspiration board on Pinterest. I have seen some darling finger puppets there, and wanted to try my hand at making my own.

I like to make sure that there are plenty of non-spooky options in our Halloween storytime packs, and the old fingerplay Two Little Blackbirds seemed like a good fit.

Two little blackbirds sitting on a wall
One named Peter, one named Paul
Fly away Peter! Fly away Paul!
Come back Peter! Come back Paul!

If you’ve never run across this one before, it goes a lot like “Where Is Thumbkin?” Start with your index fingers up in front of you, and wiggle one when you say Peter, and the other when you say Paul. Tuck your hands one by one behind your back as you say, “Fly away Peter! Fly away Paul!” and bring them back out one by one in front of you at the last line.

Here’s the little birds I made!

Now I’m sure I’m not the first person to think of adapting this to “Two Little Black Bats.” Here’s my version:

Two little black bats hanging in a cave
One named Dana, one named Dave
Fly away Dana! Fly away Dave!
Come back Dana! Come back Dave!

(My 10 year old daughter was having fun thinking of girl names that start with D. Some of her favorites were Demorna and Demetria. You go ahead and choose YOUR favorite for the rhyme!)

Here’s the bats:

Yes, I know these guys are upside down. They're BATS. I just can't help it!

It wasn’t until I finished stitching that I remembered my genius idea, which was to make the hole for the fingers be at the bats’ HEADS instead of their feet. That way when I wore the puppets, the bats would be upside down! Oh, well, maybe next time.

The shapes for both puppets are pretty simple, but I went ahead and made a printable pattern for you to use. And of course you could just make these as flannel pieces instead of finger puppets!

Blackbird and Bat Finger Puppet Pattern

I know it’s still summery out, but just this week I had a chance to start working again on our library’s storytime resource packs, and I decided to drag out the Pumpkin-Fall-Halloween packs in the faint hope that if I started on them now, I could have them refreshed and reinventoried by the time the weather turned!

I am DEFINITELY adding flannelboards for “Fall Is Not Easy,” that Cate shared with us last month, but I also wanted a small prop to hand out to the kids. I loved these felt leaves that Anne pinned to the Flannel Friday Flannelboard Inspiration board on Pinterest, but I was not in a mood to cut and stitch!

So I dug out some paper grocery sacks from under my sink, cut them into flat panels, and had my girls crumple them and uncrumple them a few times while they watched Wipeout last night. Cheap labor FTW!

I cut the leaves two at a time, freehand, making small-medium-large nodes on each side plus a small node on top, but I also found this simple clip art shape you can use as a guide.

Once they were cut out, I outlined the leaves and drew veins with a brown marker.

Presto! A little flurry of oak leaves.

I was remembering a “Mr Oak Tree” song on Hummingbird Education, but when I looked at it again, it wasn’t just about the leaves, but about the squirrels and acorns too.

Mr Oak Tree, Mr Oak Tree
Leaves float down, to the ground.
Acorns dropping–plip, plop!
Squirrels a-scamp’ring–hip, hop!
All around, on the ground.

Next I thought of another song from Hummingbird Educational that I sing in the winter, “Dance Like Snowflakes.”

Dance like snowflakes, dance like snowflakes
In the air, in the air
Whirling twirling snowflakes,
Whirling twirling snowflakes,
Everywhere, everywhere.

I used that song as a model and wrote my own Oak Tree song. Sing it to “Are You Sleeping?”

Mrs Oak Tree, Mrs Oak Tree
Tall and brown, tall and brown
Here comes a little breeze
There go your little leaves
Swirling down, to the ground.

Hand each child a leaf or two. For the first two lines, stand up and hold your leaf high! When you sing, “Here comes a little breeze,” wave your arms (and leaves) back and forth. For the last two lines, turn in a circle, fluttering your leaf closer and closer to the floor until you’re sitting down.

Today’s Flannel Friday round up will be hosted by the magnificent Cate over at Storytiming!

Good morning! Our #flannelfriday round up will be at the wonderful Anna’s blog, Future Librarian Superhero. Don’t forget to check out our new Flannel Friday boards on Pinterest! (No clue about Pinterest? Read about our project!)

I had a chance to sub for both a toddler and a family storytime last month (I only do baby storytimes regularly so this was a treat). The theme was Fish, so I created a school of fishies for sorting and counting and patterning and playing.

My original post on Color and Counting Sets has ideas for using these fish during and after storytime.

(Ed. 11/11: I am no longer sharing my clip art files due to copyright concerns, so I’ve taken down the link to the files. However, these sets are easy to make. I make them with Microsoft Word clip art, using “Edit Picture” to change the color of the original image, and copying and pasting until I have a set of six on each page. I print and laminate the images so they stand up to lots of handling and sorting!)

Have a great weekend!

Have you heard of Pinterest? It is a new way to organize images from the web. You can “pin” images from webpages onto different “boards.” You can decide how many boards you want, and what to name them. It’s a visual way to bookmark, and I am already addicted!

I have been having fun exploring my new Pinterest account and earlier today had the realization it would be a wonderful way to index all of our fabulous Flannel Friday posts. It would provide a quick way to scan all the ideas and see which ones might work for you, without having to click through each and every link on the Round Up posts.

I set up an account for Flannel Friday, and Anne and Mary let me volunteer them to help me pin and organize. Actually, I went out to dinner and they did most of the work. 🙂

Want to see? Check out the Flannel Friday boards here!

You can view the boards without a Pinterest account, but if you want to join and explore, let me know and I can send an invite. If you join Pinterest (or are there already) and want to be more involved, let me know that too: I can add you as a contributor to any or all of the Flannel Friday boards. This means that if you found a great flannelboard link out on the web, you could pin it to one of our boards yourself. Keep in mind that all boards you are a contributor to will show up on your account with all the boards you’ve created yourself. If you don’t want that to happen so you can keep your own page more streamlined, you can just follow the Flannel Friday boards and not be a contributor. You could always email or Tweet one of the contributors if you found a great image for one of the boards.

I am so excited about this new resource and can’t wait to add more ideas to it…both from the Flannel Friday crew as well as from others out on the web.

Have fun exploring and let us know what you think!

Good morning! The Flannel Friday roundup will be at Mollie’s place today!

I am still dealing with my summer schedule (and my summer brain) so here is another rhyme from my files.

I was reading a bunch of chickens & hens ideas to prep for a farm storytime, and came across a rhyme with lots of chicks in different colors. That rhyme sparked this idea!

This Little Chick

This little chick was gray
And this little chick was brown
This little chick was yellow
And THIS chick was upside down!

You can do it a couple of different times, switching the colors around…as long as you keep the brown chick in the second line, it will all work out! You could also do it with lots of other animals or objects to fit with almost any theme.

(Ed. 11/11: I am no longer sharing my clip art files due to copyright concerns, so I’ve taken down the link to the scans. However, if you search in Microsoft Word clip art you may find the original file I started with.)

TGIFF! (Thank Goodness It’s Flannel Friday, of course!)

Super Sharon at Rain Makes Applesauce will have the Round Up later today!

Mollie and Katie have already presented a fun ladybug rhyme for Flannel Friday; here’s another way to use ladybugs for counting in storytime.

I made a set of about 30 ladybugs, and each ladybug has one, two, three, four, five or six spots. I used a 3″ scrapbooking circle punch on red construction paper, then I actually cut out all the black pieces from black construction paper, glued them on, and laminated the whole thing on top of white cardstock.

To make the black “heads” I cut a black 3″ circle, then cut that into four quarters. Each quarter I glued on to the edge of the red circle, then trimmed it off. The black line is just a skinny piece of construction paper, and the spots are cut with a 1/2″ circle punch.

I have to admit, I do like how cutting and punching the black shapes made the ladybugs so uniform, but really, a black Sharpie would do the trick much more quickly.

Here’s a close up:

Hand all the ladybugs out to your group, then tell the kids to count how many spots are on their ladybug. Have all the kids with one spot bring them up to put on the board, then all the kids with two spots come up, and so forth.

Or, you can put twelve random ladybugs on your board as you sing “The Ladybug’s Picnic” from Sesame Street.

What else could you do with all these ladybugs?

Well, I was a good worker bee and scheduled Flannel Friday posts for the last couple weeks to go up while I was on vacation, and now that I’m back, all this week I thought I had one scheduled for today as well.

Guess what? I didn’t! And it’s my day off and I can’t pull one together from home today, so this is my first Flannel Friday since January without a pattern or idea. *cue sad violin music*

However, I recently had a comment from a reader asking for storage ideas. So that’s today’s post: How do you store your flannelboards? How do you store and organize your sets and pieces? If you are a part of a larger system, do you share throughout the whole system, or does each branch have their own stash? If you share among branches, how does that work? Does anyone buy their own materials and make flannel sets on their own time, and thus consider their sets their own property, rather than the library’s? Do you store your pieces by rhyme, or do you store, say, sets of animals, and then pull out from different envelopes the ones that you need that day?

At my library, flannel sets have been stored in 10 x 13 manila envelopes, with the name of the flannel (and if it is magnetic, felt, etc) on the long edge. (I will take photos and add to this post soon.) These envelopes are set into a four-drawer file cabinet in alphabetical order, so you can riffle through the top edges in each drawer to find the one you want. There’s a typed list in a Word doc, but nothing fancy for indexing or searching.

Recently, the department has invested in some of those translucent poly envelopes, which are even better: you can see at a glance what the pieces look like and if it’s the set you’re looking for. Plus they’re more durable and less inclined to tear than the manila ones.

What do you guys do?

Share a comment with your thoughts, or write a post on your own blog (with photos!) and share the link, and I’ll write up a compilation post!

PS! The Round Up is at the amazing Andrea’s place today! Check out all the ideas atRovingfiddlehead Kidlit. It’s already up, but you can send her links throughout the day and she will add to the post. Yahoo!

Welcome to Flannel Friday! The fabulous Katie at Storytime Katie will have the round up at her place today!

Earlier this year Mollie shared her colorful flannel scene for Blue is the Sky. I had found the rhyme* years ago in our files and like Mollie I have adapted it in different ways. This is my “autumn” version:

I just put the shapes up as I say this rhyme:

Blue is the sky
Yellow is the sun
Silver are the stars when the day is done

Orange is the leaf
Brown is the tree
Red is the apple for you and me.

It’s all flannel pieces: The sun, stars, leaf, and apple are Ellison dies. The blue sky is free cut. The stars are gray flannel with tin foil glued on top. The tree I made from a coloring sheet: I found a nice summer tree coloring page and left off the leaves and extended the branches. I liked the resulting pattern so much that it’s still hanging in my cube in case of flannel tree emergencies.

This is the version I found in our files. I’ve done it as an action rhyme:

Blue is the lake
Hold arms out in a circle in front of you
Yellow is the sun
Move arms, still in circle, overhead
Silver are the stars when the day is done
Wiggle fingers overhead
Red is the apple
Make a round ball with your fingers in front of you
Green is the tree
Hold arms up like branches
Brown is a cookie for you and me
Rub tummy!

For a Windy Day storytime, I changed the last line to:

Purple is a kite for you and me
Make a diamond shape with your pointer fingers and thumbs, and move it back and forth

*uncredited, so I’m really happy to have the source now, thanks Mollie!

Happy Fourth! The amazing Katie at Secrets and Sharing Soda has the round up this week. I am counting the days until our August storytime break and the end of summer reading so I can dig in and make some more new flannelboards! Meanwhile, I am pulling out another super-easy flannel from my files this week to share.

Five Cookies

Hmm. The baker was a little OCD with the sprinkle placement, don't you think?

These are round circles of tan construction paper, with freehand cut white frosting shapes glued on top, and the sprinkles are just markers. You can’t really tell in the photo, but one cookie has orange sprinkles and one has red.

I use these cookies and sing “Down Around the Corner.” Sing it to “Five Little Ducks Went Out to Play.”

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

You can use this for lots of storytime themes, Eating obviously, but also Neighborhood or Jobs (to go with a book about a baker maybe), or Colors. It’s also a good one to bring out at the holidays, if you want to have a seasonal storytime without being Christmas-centric: Everybody can get behind some sprinkle cookies!