BONUS Flannel Friday: Storybox

OK you guys! I have another Flannel Friday this week for you, but it’s not mine! My colleague Julie sent me an email today, and first of all said THANKS to everyone for all the great Flannel Friday ideas, which she is starting to use for her own library.

She went on, “So since your group is so friendly and giving I wanted to give back. I don’t have a blog, but was hoping you might be able to share for me.” Julie got this idea from another colleague and put it into practice for her own storytime groups.

So here it is, a Storytime Storybox! Here’s a sneak preview:

Here’s her Word doc with detailed instructions and more photos.

Thank you Julie!

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Flannel Friday: Rain on the Green Grass

What a crazy June! I hope you all are hanging in there with your Summer Reading programs. I didn’t get to make anything new this week, so I pulled out an old flannel! I made this years ago. It goes to the old rhyme “Rain on the Green Grass.”

Rain on the green grass,
Rain on the tree,
Rain on the rooftop,
But not on me!

I made up a second verse to go along:

Rain on the flowers,
Rain on the sea,
Rain on umbrellas,
But not on me!

No patterns, because my scans were too dark the first time around. I’ll try again, but it will be a few weeks before I get to it. In the meantime, check out this week’s round up at So Tomorrow! (We still have a couple weeks open in August if you are interested in hosting Flannel Friday at your blog!)

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Flannel Friday Round Up!

So many great children’s library bloggers are involved in Flannel Friday that it’s been five weeks since I hosted a round up, and we’re also booked for hosts for the next six weeks! If you are interested in hosting in August, let Anne at So Tomorrow know, and she can add you to the schedule on her blog. She has been so generous to have her blog serve as the online hub of Flannel Friday.

Here’s today’s Round Up! If I missed you, leave me a comment and a link!

Baa Baa Black Sheep
from Andrea (@aflemming) at Rovingfiddlehead Kidlit

Storytime Magic! (Caterpillar-Cocoon-Butterfly)
from Anne (@opinionsbyanna) at Future Librarian Superhero

Silly Sally
from Anne (@sotomorrow) at So Tomorrow

A House for Birdie
From Cate (@storytimingcate) at Storytiming

Summer Shapes
from Katie (@katietweetsya) at Storytime Katie

Sorting Activity: Around the Neighborhood
from Katie (@sharingsoda) at Story Time Secrets

There’s a Bug on the Teacher!
from Mary (@daisycakes) at Miss Mary Liberry

Ice Cream Summer
from Mollie (@molliekay) at Miss Mollie’s Storytime Fun

I Had a Cat
from Nicole (@Nikarella) at Narrating Tales of Preschool Storytime

Mouse Shapes
from Sarah at Read Rabbit Read

Mary Had a Little Lamb
from Tracey (@tcy28) at 1234 More Storytimes

Shoo Fly (Pipe cleaner puppets)
from me here at Mel’s Desk

Wow!

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Not a Flannel Friday: Shoo Fly

TGIF! The Flannel Friday round up will be right here on Mel’s Desk! Check back this evening for the post!

I think these pipe cleaner puppets are kind of cute! I made them for our Bugs Storytime Resource Pack. Storytime providers can hand one out to each child to use during the activity, then will collect them again at the end of storytime.

They’re pretty easy to make. Use a black pipe cleaner, another of any color, and half of a white one.

Start by wrapping up the black one into a ball and tucking the pointy ends into the middle.

Take the white one and thread it through the middle of the black ball, bending each arm into a wing shape and tucking the pointy ends in again.

A whole pipecleaner in any other color can be used for the “handle” of the puppet. Bend the pipecleaner in half, twist it a couple times, and thread it through the middle of the fly, and twist the ends together.

Now you can sing Shoo Fly!

Shoo fly, don’t bother me
Shoo fly, don’t bother me
Shoo fly, don’t bother me
I belong to somebody!

At the end of the verse, put your fly somewhere on your body and say, “Oh no! The fly has landed on my KNEE! Can you make your fly land on your knee? Where is your knee? Oh no, shoo fly!” And then have the kids whoosh their flies off their knees while you sing the verse again. As you sing the verse, you can zoom your fly around through the air. Don’t forget to add in some less common body parts, such as “shin” or “ankle” or “wrist” or “waist.”

You could also sing, “There’s a Fly on the Floor,” instead of “There’s a Spider on the Floor.”

If you have enough puppets, you can hand two out to each child, and use them to act out “Two Little Shoo Flies”

Two little shoo flies sitting on the wall
One named Peter, one named Paul
Fly away Peter! Fly away Paul!
Come back Peter! Come back Paul!

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Fourth of July Storytime Ideas

When I posted a clip art set for “There’s a Parade in the Middle of the Street,” we talked in the comments about how hard it is to find good storytime material for the Fourth of July. I have gathered and created a few things over the years and am sharing them with you now, on Flag Day! This is just a list, rather than an agenda, since I am gathering from several different storytime plans. [PS: If you tried to download the pdf for the parade clip art and couldn’t get it, I have now fixed the link!]

Books

Fiesta Babies, by Tafolla. My new favorite book for celebrations. These babies do it all: sing, dance, eat, enjoy their families, and nap!

Yankee Doodle, by Owen. I have used this simple version of the folktale in storytime before, but I have to tell you, I am past the point where I can be enthusiastic about singing “and with the girls be handy.” Seriously, I can’t do it anymore!

Yankee Doodle, by Hoberman. If you’re in the same boat, check out this version of the song. You can skip the first two traditional verses and just jump right in to Mary Ann Hoberman’s own silly continuation of the song.

The Flag Book, by the Smithsonian. This is a board book for babies, and is written in a question-and-answer format: “What are the colors in the flag? Red, white, and blue.” You could ditch the words entirely and just talk about the pictures.

Apple Pie Fourth of July, by Wong. This is a longer story, great for preschool or family storytimes, about a girl who hates having to hang out in her family’s Chinese restaurant all day on the 4th when she’d rather be doing “real” Fourth of July activities.

Word Bird’s Summer Words, by Moncure. I have used this with the babies, because it is just one word and one illustration on the page. There’s a sequence in the middle with the words ice cream/Fourth of July/parade/flags/fireworks and I just show those pages and talk about those words. Ending on the fireworks page lets me go right into…

Songs and Bounces

Twinkle, Twinkle, Fireworks
I wrote this a few years ago! I put a clip art photo of fireworks on the flannelboard as we sing.

Twinkle, twinkle, fireworks
Flashing high above the earth
All the shining sparkles say,
“Happy Independence Day!”
Twinkle, twinkle, fireworks
Flashing high above the earth.

You’re A Grand Old Flag

This is what I would sing now instead of Yankee Doodle. My dad sang this one to us all the time so I’m really comfortable with the tune, and it’s nice and bouncy. I like the pictures the version illustrated by Ann Owen, but there’s a couple other versions that would work, too.

I think it would be fun to make shower-curtain-ribbon rings with red, white, and blue ribbons, and give them to the kids to wave around while you sang. (I’d say go get those little US flags at the dollar store, but I worry about their eye-poking potential.)

If you do sing Yankee Doodle, a nice follow up is The Royal Duke of York because they’re both about marching military guys.

Other Stuff

Photo Cards

One thing I’ve done with the babies when I don’t have a good book to read is just show them a sequence of photos from clip art. I print them out so they fill an 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of paper, and we just talk about the pictures. For some of the holidays, I have “color sets” with photos of objects with different colors. So we can talk about pink and red and white things on Valentine’s Day, and green things on St Patrick’s Day, and so forth. I have a set of red, white, and blue photos that I get out for the Fourth of July. You could make your own set of smaller images, and hand them out to the older kids, and have them come up to put first all the red things on the board, then the blue things, then the white things.

Color Game

Along the same lines, you can play the red, white, and blue flannelboard game that I posted last week for Flannel Friday!

What else have you done for a patriotic storytime?

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Flannel Friday: Red White and Blue

Today the round up is hosted by the fabulous Tracey at 1234 More Storytimes, so check there later for all the links. The more, the merrier, so if you’ve been thinking you want to participate, jump right in. Post to your blog with your Flannel Friday, then tweet it with the #flannelfriday hashtag. If you’re not on Twitter and you’d like to share, just leave a link to your Flannel Friday post in the comments of Tracey’s round up post, and she will add you. If you don’t have a blog but would still like to share your idea, contact me in the comments here and we’ll get your idea up on Tracey’s blog!

So anyway…I have been working on a post of Fourth of July storytime ideas, in which I started to describe this activity, but then just decided it would be much easier to show, so it became this week’s Flannel Friday! (The Fourth post will go up early next week.)

This is a super simple idea I found in my library’s storytime files, so I don’t know who to credit. It was originally for St Patrick’s Day, but I adapted it for the Fourth of July.

Make a selection of shapes in red, white, and blue, using felt or construction paper. Try to use shapes or objects that are pretty strongly associated with each color (apple = red, cloud = white). I made four red, four white, and four blue shapes, but then I didn’t use them all for this demonstration because they didn’t all fit on the board.

All you do is slowly put all the red things up on the board, naming each one as you go.

“This apple is red…this fire engine is red…this ladybug is red…”

Then put a white thing up in the same row, but say, “This bone is red….”

Oh, silly! That bone is white! Your preschoolers will certainly correct you. Your toddlers might need a little prompting! You can say, “Wait a minute! That bone isn’t red! What color is it? It’s white!”

Then put it down on the next row and say, “So this bone is white…” and continue, once again ending with the wrong color, this time one of the blue things.

Go through the routine again, and last but not least, you put up the flag and say, “This flag is blue…” Oh no it’s not! It’s red, white, AND blue!

Another way to end is to get all your pieces on the board and look at them and say, “Wow, look at these cool colors. What are they? Red, white, and blue. I know something that has ALL of those colors…do you? We wave it around at parades and we see it on the flagpole. It’s our flag!”

Easy peasy activity, but those kids do like to catch us making mistakes! As I said, the version in our files is for St Patrick’s Day, and it had a lot of green objects, plus a yellow sun, black bat, etc. You’d put up two or three green things, then put up the yellow sun and say, “This sun is green…” Instead of moving the yellow sun to the next row, just leave it there and start a second row of green things. At the end of each row you’ll have an object of a different color. The last thing you put on the board is a shamrock shape!

No patterns for you today, since I used Ellison dies for everything except the cloud and the raindrop, which I free cut. You can use whatever dies you have at hand, or find some coloring pages online to use as templates.

You could do this for any of the holidays that have colors associated with them…like Valentine’s Day or Halloween, or even Thanksgiving. You could do a red-yellow-blue version for a Color theme, or do any colors at all for a Silly theme.

Have fun!

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Mix and Match Cinderella

I’m all done with my school Summer Reading visits! I spent months this year trying to decide how to do what I wanted to do. Summer visits are pretty much the only time I learn a story to tell, and I always want it to be something that I’m going to have a lot of fun with. This year the first thing that came to mind for the One World Many Stories CSRP theme was a DIY Cinderella story. A few years ago I bought my daughter a copy of Glass Slipper, Gold Sandal: A Worldwide Cinderella, by Paul Fleischman and Judy Paschkis. Together the author and illustrator stitch together details from over a dozen versions of the Cinderella story from around the world into a single narrative.

Though it has mixed reviews because some readers find it confusing and low on young child appeal, my girls and I love it. I don’t think it was meant to be read as a Cinderella story for young children, I think it is meant to be read as a celebration of diversity, and an invitation to exploration, by older children, teens, and adults. And that’s what I wanted to do this year: celebrate all the different variations of this story we know so well. But I wasn’t sure how to do this in 10 minutes! I was stuck for a long time because I wanted to invite some kids up to the front to hold pictures of the different variations, but I knew I couldn’t count on having a stage, or really, on any room at all: sometimes we are all squeezed into the library and the first row of kids is sitting ten inches from my toes.

I was really encouraged when I saw on PUBYAC that someone else had the same idea, but in addition to not being able to rely on having a stage, I wasn’t going to have an assistant with me, so I needed to keep thinking. Finally I decided on making smaller pictures rather than poster-sized ones, so that I could hold them more easily, and realized that if they were smaller, I could attach them together like a book and flip easily from picture to picture.

My family helped me decide which elements from the story we would use: the impossible chore Cinderella was given before she could go to the ball, the magic creature who helped her, what she wore on her feet, and how she got to the ball. I sat down to read about 20 different Cinderellas to do my research and take some notes!

Then I had the really fun part of making the pictures! I have discovered in the process of making my homemade big books that using cut-paper collage works well for me. By some quirk I’m a better free-hand cutter-out-er than I am a draw-er, and using construction paper allows me to use all sorts of crutches (using clip art as templates, starting with a very basic shape and cutting down, building complicated images from smaller basic shapes) that I can’t use while sketching.

I think it took about 8 hours from the time I started cutting to when I finished gluing, maybe more like 10. I started at work and finished at home. That doesn’t include all the back-burner time I spent before that thinking about how I wanted the pictures to look. I’m really happy with how they turned out. There are four different “books.” I glued images back to back, and glued a flap in between each pair, so that they can open and close backwards and forwards and I could have any image that I wanted facing out. I built them on cardstock, and they are sturdy enough I will be able to use them for years.

Chores:

Pots and pans, for general housework, from the traditional French
Wash the linens at the river, from Egypt (The Egyptian Cinderella/Climo)
Weed the rice field, from Korea (The Korean Cinderella/Climo)
Pick lentils out of the ashes, from Germany (Cinderella: The Oryx Multicultural Folktale Series/Sierra)

Magic Helper:

Crocodile, from the Philippines and Indonesia (Gift of the Crocodile/Sierra)
Fairy Godmother, from France
Fish, from China (Yeh-Shen/Louie)
Birch tree, from Russia (Glass Slipper, Gold Sandal/Fleischman)

Shoes:

Diamond anklets, from India (Glass Slipper, Gold Sandal/Fleischman)
Glass slipper, from France
Golden sandal, from the Middle East (Glass Slipper, Gold Sandal/Fleischman)
Moccasin, from Native America [I cheated on this one, in these tales Cinderella actually wears worn-out moccasins, not nice beaded ones] (Rough-Face Girl/Martin)

Conveyance:

Pumpkin coach, from France
Walking, from many versions, including Spanish-America (Little Gold Star/San Souci)
Horse, from Finland (Cinderella: The Oryx Multicultural Folktale Series/Sierra)
Breadfruit coach, from the Caribbean (Cendrillon/San Souci)

I developed a really abbreviated version of the story that would let me spend time with these elements and skip over everything else. I had the kids fill in the blanks with the pieces they knew as I went along.

Once upon a time, there lived a girl whose father died and left her to live with __________ and _________ . They treated her ___________ and made her do __________ . One day, the household heard about a fancy _________ ….

"Did they let her go to the ball? NO."

When I got to the chores, I held up the pots and pans picture, and we talked about what they knew about that part of the story. Then I said, “But it’s not always washing the dishes that keeps Cinderella from the ball! In Korea, she has to weed the rice fields.” And I’d flip to that picture. We went through all four pictures, talking about them (“What’s a lentil?”) then I would ask which one we should use in our story. Of course everybody yelled at once, but it was usually pretty clear which one was a strong candidate. Once in awhile I had them raise hands. If I couldn’t hear one thing over another, I just chose one myself! Then I propped up that image (on a stage, on a library shelf) and went on with the story.

Here we are choosing the last piece. You can see the others set on the stage behind me.

After we chose all four elements, we skipped right along through the ball/midnight/lost slipper/search/fitting part of the story, and we all said, “happily ever after” together, and I went on with the details for our summer reading program.

I loved this. I loved that I didn’t have to really memorize anything, I loved that they got a chance to participate, I loved that we talked about a bunch of stuff as we went along (“Do you know why they called her Cinderella?” “What’s a breadfruit?”), and I loved that the times when they interrupted me and said, “No, that’s not how it goes,” I could say, “Actually, there are LOTS of different ways to tell this!” I loved that when there were kids from Korea or India or Russia, we could choose those elements for our story. I loved that it worked with everyone from Kindergarten through even the so-done-with-it-all 5th graders….

…who wanted to stay after and put the story together in their own way.

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Baby Storytime: One World Many Stories

I wasn’t sure if this would come together, but here it is! Short but sweet!

OPENING SONG: Hello Song*

OPENING FINGERPLAY: Open Them Shut Them*

BOOK: Say Hello! by ISADORA
Carmelita walks around the block with her dog, and says hello to her neighbors in different languages. I listened to clips online of the ones I didn’t know to make sure I could say them smoothly. I love the Internet!

SONG: Frere Jacques / Are You Sleeping?
I used a big bear puppet and a little bear puppet and had them sing to each other, to add some visual interest.

FLANNEL SONG: A Hunting We Will Go*
Today we used bear/chair, dog/frog, hen/pen, and cat/hat.

BOOK: My Aunt Came Back by CUMMINGS
I love this board book. It inspired a clip art flannelboard, but I didn’t use it with the babies today. I just sang the book and had the grownups sing the responses back to me.

LITERACY TIP: Print Motivation
Sign up for our summer reading program and your baby can get a free board book! The more books in a house, the better readers the kids in it turn out to be!

SONG: Los pollitos dicen
I played this on CD while we used egg shakers and moved our bodies. I also tried my darnedest to learn it so I could really sing along! Here’s the site I used, with a cute video of the song. In storytime, I played Elizabeth Mitchell’s version from her CD “You Are My Little Bird.” If you don’t know Mitchell yet, GO RIGHT NOW AND LISTEN. Her voice is gorgeous.

Los pollitos dicen, pio pio pio
Cuando tienen hambre, cuando tienen frio.
La gallina busca el maiz y el trigo
Les da la comida y les presta abrigo.
Bajo sus dos alas acurrucaditos
Hasta el otro dia duerman los pollitos.

ACTION RHYME: This is Big Big Big*

CLOSING SONG: Sneeze Game*

*Check out the My Baby Storytime page for the words and/or citations for these weekly activities!

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Flannel Friday: There’s a Parade In the Middle of the Street

This week’s Flannel Friday is hosted by the amazing Mollie at Miss Mollie’s Storytime Fun! Check there later today for the Round Up!

I know we’re early for the Fourth of July, but this is what I had ready in time for Friday this week! Fourth of July is one of those holidays that I think it would be fun to celebrate in storytime…at least until I try to pull some good stuff together and it’s a struggle to find what I want! Every other year or so I give it a go at my baby storytime.

I made this clip art set a few years ago, and revised this week it so the colors were even more Fourth-of-July-y.

Yes, it does seem as if nobody is sure which direction the parade is going.

Sing it to, “There’s a Hole in the Middle of the Road.”

There’s a firetruck in the middle of the street
There’s a firetruck in the middle of the street
There’s a firetruck, there’s a firetruck
There’s a firetruck in the middle of the street.

There’s a horse and a firetruck in the middle of the street
There’s a horse and a firetruck in the middle of the street
There’s a horse, there’s a horse
There’s a horse in the middle of the street.

There’s a clown and a horse and a firetruck in the middle of the street
There’s a clown and a horse and a firetruck in the middle of the street
There’s a clown, there’s a clown,
There’s a clown in the middle of the street.

There’s a flag and a clown and a horse and a firetruck in the middle of the street
There’s a flag and a clown and a horse and a firetruck in the middle of the street
There’s a flag, there’s a flag,
There’s a flag in the middle of the street.

It’s a parade!

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Why I Like Felt for Flannelboards

So I talked a little last week about why I’m so hooked on clip art for my flannelboards, but I wanted to give equal time to felt! Here’s my list of why I like to use felt for flannelboards, too.

Layering Pieces

To make the laminated clip art stick to the board, I need to use Velcro sticky dots on the backs, and most of the time this works just fine. For some rhymes, though, I want to be able to hide one piece behind another piece very easily, without worrying about lining up the Velcro dots. Felt is perfect for this, because everything sticks to everything else.

Good examples of this are the popcorn shapes, where I slap the popped corn on top of the kernel, and the duckling hiding behind the egg shell:

Using Both Sides

While I have made a two-sided set of clip art for the Clean and Dirty Pigs, most of the time when I want to use both sides of the flannel piece, it’s easier to use felt. Both sides will stick to the board without any fuss.

My Summer Shapes set is like that:

Simple is Best

For some flannelboard sets, the simpler the better. When all I need is shapes without much detail, I love using felt. I think the visual impact of the solid colors on the solid background of the board is really strong.

Here’s the set for “My Big Blue Boat.”

Visual & Tactile Interest

Most of our kids spend a lot of time in front of computer screens, game console screens, TVs, looking at images that are flashy and slick. I love that felt pieces give them something completely different to look at and think about. When we spend the time to layer our felt pieces with multiple shapes and colors, there’s a real tactile element to the pieces, too. I also like the subtle message to grownups that activities don’t have to be plugged in and souped up to hold our children’s attention.

Cost

While I need to purchase a list of materials for my clip art images, all I need for felt shapes is the felt and glue, and sometimes some floss or thread.

Artsy Craftsy

This reason doesn’t have much to do with storytime or with presentation, but it’s a real reason nonetheless: I like to do crafts. I like needlework, sewing, papercrafts, and I like learning new techniques. I spend a good amount of time on my clip art images, changing the colors, changing the shapes, making them look just the way I want, and that’s satisfying, but it’s not the same as making something with my hands. I really enjoy getting out the felt and scissors and needles and thread and glue and patterns to make something for storytime…I just like making stuff. I even liked sewing on all the little seeds onto my strawberries!

What materials do you use for your flannelboard sets? Why do you like them? Let us know!

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