Mel's Desk

Welcome to Flannel Friday! I will post a round up of all the Flannel Friday posts at the end of the day, so make sure to come back to see the full line up. You won’t want to miss any of the fabulous ideas. You can check out the other Flannel Friday Round Up posts while you wait! [Ed: Flannel Friday Round Up 5 is here!]

Here’s a prop I just made for our bookmobile storytime librarian. I have seen this idea before (on the Internet? In a storytime storage closet?) and liked it because it is an all-in-one prop, no flannelboard or separate pieces necessary. I have no idea what it’s called. “Storytime Paper Towel Tube Song Prop Thingy”?

The frogs are on construction paper rings that slide around the paper towel tube. When you start the song, all frogs are right side up, on top of the log. As you sing and as each frog jumps into the pool, you rotate the ring around the tube until the frog is upside down and facing backwards, and the “pool” is facing the audience instead.

Here’s how I did it:

First, cover a paper towel tube with brown construction paper. I used a plain old glue stick.

Then use more brown construction paper to cut five strips 2 x 12. You can find your own frog images, or use the adorable ones I found in Microsoft Clip Art. If you use your own frogs, resize the images so they are no more than 2″ wide, and a uniform height. (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 photos. However, if you search in Microsoft Word clip art you may find the original files I started with.)

Take each strip and wrap it around the tube. What I did was match the ends, then crease the paper where it met the tube. Don’t glue it yet!

When you have the creases on the strips, you can draw on some “speckles” to the center portion, on what will be the outside of the ring. I also tried gluing a strip of wax paper to the center portion on what would be the “inside” of the paper ring. I was thinking it might make the ring easier to slide around the tube, but now that I did it, I’m not sure it makes a big difference.

Cut a 2 x 12 inch strip of blue construction paper, and cut “waves” along one edge.

Take your brown strips and glue the top and bottom sections together so that your speckles are on the outside and the wax paper is on the inside. You’ll have a ring with a flap on top.

Then, cut out your adorable frogs, and cut your blue strip into 2-inch sections. Hold a ring so the flap is on top, and glue the frog on, right-side-up. Flip the ring upside down, and glue a wave section onto the other side. Remember, you want the tips of your waves to be near the ring, so they will be right-side-up when you slide the ring around the tube. Check out the picture to make sure you’ve got it:

Trim off the extra flap at the top of each ring.

Carefully slide the five rings onto the tube. Make sure your frogs are all facing the same direction!

Looks like they all jumped into the pool!

Hear the tune and the words to this song over here.

I’m trying to think of other songs or stories you could use this type of prop for. I guess any “Five Little Whatsit” rhyme would work! Do you have any ideas?

If you make your own Storytime Paper Towel Tube Song Prop Thingy, let me know! I’d love to post a photo of yours here too, or link to a post on your blog.

Happy Earth Day! Grab some of these ideas and “recycle” them to your files!

Five Little Flowers
from Anne at So Tomorrow
Follow her on Twitter @sotomorrow

Froggy Gets Dressed
from Katie at Storytime Katie
Follow her on Twitter @katietweetsya

Who Uses This?
from Mary at Miss Mary Liberry
Follow her on Twitter @daisycakes

Five Bottles of Juice on the Wall
from Mollie at Miss Mollie’s Storytime Fun
Follow her on Twitter @molliekay

Five Little Raindrops
from Nicole at Narrating Tales of Preschool Storytime
Follow her on Twitter @Nikarella

Five Circus Elephants
from Sharon at Rain Makes Applesauce
Follow her on Twitter @ReadingChick

Animal Pairs
from me here at Mel’s Desk
I’m on Twitter @MelissaZD

Have a great weekend!

I am cheating! Totally! Today’s Flannel Friday is a pattern that I’ve already shared, on my Beyond Five Little Whatsits post. But I’m updating the file, since I noticed one of the animals was missing (whoops), and adding some other ideas for how to use these pieces, so that’s how I’m making it up to you.

Today we’ve got Animal Pairs. It’s very simple, just a big animal and a little animal that match. Here’s what you can do with them!

Little Bear, Where Is Your Mama?

Put four of the big animals up on the flannelboard. Then hold up one of the little ones, and say, “Little Bear, where is your mama?” Hold the bear up to some of the other animals one by one. “No, this is not the Mama Bear. This is a seahorse and it is orange….Oh! Here’s the Mama Bear! She looks just like her baby.” Repeat until all the animals have been found.

Matching Game

Hand out all the animals to the kids. If you have more than 16 in your group, you can make more than one set of animals. Then have one child bring their animal to the board. Ask, “Wow, it’s a turtle! Who has another turtle?” When they come up, you can put it on the board and ask, “Is it bigger or littler than the first turtle?” If you’ve got more than one set going, you can have the children group the animals by big and little as they put them on the board.

Guessing Game

Hold all the big animals in your hand. Give the kids clues about the animals one by one. “I’m thinking of an animal, and it lives in the ocean or a lake, and it swims underwater. What is it?” As they guess, put the animal on the board.

Down By the Bay

Sing “Down by the Bay.” For each verse, put an animal on the board: “Did you ever see a….” and let the kids tell you the name of the animal: “Snail!” Then, finish the verse. You can either just make up a rhyme yourself, or stop and have the kids help you think of a rhyme for each animal. “Snail! Wow! What does ‘snail’ rhyme with? What does it sound like? Pail? OK! ‘Did you ever see a snail carrying a pail / Down by the bay.'”

What else can you do with these guys?

(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. I found these animal cartoons in Microsoft Word clip art, but they are no longer available there, which is a shame since they are so charming. You can search your favorite clip art sites for animal images you like, then just copy and paste and resize so that one is larger than the other.)

A few more flannelboard ideas for another week of Flannel Friday! Some of these ideas will work with One World Many Stories…it was kind of tricky coming up with them, so if you think of a rhyme or a story that would work on a flannelboard, leave us a comment and let us know! It turned out that Anne and Mary posted the same story with different flannel pieces…it’s great to see different ways to tell it!

The Great Big Enormous Turnip
from Anne at So Tomorrow
Follow her on Twitter @sotomorrow
Also see her “Bonus Flannel Friday” post: Birthday!

The Pizza That Sally Made
from Katie at Storytime Katie
Follow her on Twitter @katietweetsya

The Enormous Turnip / El nabo gigante
from Mary at Miss Mary Liberry
Follow her on Twitter @daisycakes

Pretty Ladybugs
from Mollie at Miss Mollie’s Storytime Fun
Follow her on Twitter @molliekay

An Elephant Never Forgets
from Sharon at Rain Makes Applesauce
Follow her on Twitter @ReadingChick

My Aunt Came Back
from me here at Mel’s Desk
I’m on Twitter @MelissaZD

Thanks to all who participated!

So Anne over at So Tomorrow had the idea to try to gather some flannelboard ideas we could use with the Collaborative Summer Reading Program theme “One World Many Stories”!

We just had a refresher training session/idea swap at my library for those of us who go out to schools for our Summer Reading Program promotional visits. It’s always fun to brainstorm, and “My Aunt Came Back” is one of the songs that came to mind.

“My Aunt Came Back” is a call-and-response camp song, and with each verse the singers add a specific hand or body motion (kind of like “Button Factory” or “Tooty Ta”) until by the end everyone is wiggly and giggly. Here’s a good basic version from YouTube.

“My Aunt Came Back” is also an awesome board book by Pat Cummings!

Instead of focusing on the silly, Pat Cummings adapted the song to focus on places around the world; the aunt in her book brings back wonderful souvenirs for her niece (a quilted vest from Bucharest, a painted fan from Old Japan). This version was my inspiration for a new clip art flannel set!

(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 photos. However, if you search in Microsoft Word clip art you may find the original files I started with.)

Sweet! We had another great day for Flannel Friday! Check out all these great flannelboards, and join us next week if you want! We’d love to see (er, steal) your ideas!

Flip Flap Jack
from Anne at So Tomorrow
Follow her on Twitter @sotomorrow

Charlie C the Centipede
from Brianna at Storytime with Miss Brianna (she’s not posting much new storytime stuff there because these days she’s hanging out with the teens, but there is a great archive for you to explore!)
follow her on Twitter @librarykitty

Papa Please Get the Moon For Me
from Katie at Storytime Katie
Follow her on Twitter @katietweetsya

Little Peter Rabbit
Mary at Miss Mary Liberry
Follow her on Twitter @daisycakes

Blue Is the Sky
from Mollie at Miss Mollie’s Storytime Fun
Follow her on Twitter @molliekay

Introducing…Miss Mouse
from Sharon at Rain Makes Applesauce
Follow her on Twitter @ReadingChick

Willoughby Wallaby
from me here at Mel’s Desk
I’m on Twitter @MelissaZD

Thanks to all who participated!

I was reminded of Willoughby Wallaby Woo this week and decided it would make a fun flannelboard!

Willoughby Wallaby Woo, an elephant sat on you
Willoughby Wallaby Wee, an elephant sat on me
Willoughby Wallaby Wake, an elephant sat on a snake
Willoughby Wallaby Warmadillo, an elephant sat on an armadillo

You could sing the song, and put one animal at a time on the flannelboard under the elephant, or you could put a variety of animals up on the board to begin with, and then move the elephant around as you sang. The kids could call out which animal they wanted the elephant to sit on next!

Or you could start with the one syllable animals, like the fish, and move along to the multisyllable animals like the alligator (or is it a crocodile?). A great tip for the grown ups is to remind them that when you’re playing around with rhymes, nonsense words are great! Words don’t have to be in the dictionary to help kids learn how words come apart into sounds.

I have been thinking about a Big & Small storytime, so I added in a Triceratops! In the pdf, she is not much bigger than the elephant. I enlarged her 150% on a color copier, and printed her on 11×17 paper, to get her to this size.

(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 files I started with.)

Woot! Today was a super fun Flannel Friday! We had a bunch of people at the party, so make sure you check out all their cool flannelboard ideas!

Moose In Love
from Anne at So Tomorrow
Follow her on Twitter @sotomorrow

Kite
from Katie at Storytime Katie
Follow her on Twitter @katietweetsya

5 Pigs So Squeaky Clean
Mary at Miss Mary Liberry
Follow her on Twitter @daisycakes

Teeth!
from Mollie at Miss Mollie’s Storytime Fun (a blog she started just so she could do Flannel Friday today!)
Follow her on Twitter @molliekay

I’m the Biggest Thing in the Ocean!
from Nicole at Narrating Tales of Preschool Storytime
Follow her on Twitter @nikarella

The Magic Envelope
from Sharon at Rain Makes Applesauce
Follow her on Twitter @ReadingChick

A Hunting We Will Go
from me here at Mel’s Desk
I’m on Twitter @MelissaZD

PLUS! I posted on PUBYAC with an invitation to Flannel Friday, and I got an email from Carrie in Utah, who sent along these draw and tell stories to share:
Rudolf and His Nose (.pub)
Cat In the Hat (.docx)
Gingerbread Man (.docx)
Carrie also recommends the website Super Simple Songs as a great storytime resource!

Thanks to everyone for participating! See you next week!

Today’s flannel is one I’ve shared before on this blog, but I just updated it and wanted to share it again!

Every week in my Baby Storytimes we repeat five elements: I have an opening song and an opening rhyme and a closing rhyme and a closing song that stay the same, and then somewhere in the middle, we always sing “A Hunting We Will Go.”

A hunting we will go, a hunting we will go
We’ll catch a fox and put him in a box
And never let him go!

How I Do It

I sing it to the tune of “The Farmer in the Dell,” but I just found out there’s another tune for it, too. (Now that I have two tunes in my head we’ll see if I can sing it at all on Monday!) I also realized that some versions are more tenderhearted than mine, because they change the last line to “And then we’ll let him go.” Oh well! Too late now, all my grown-ups have memorized it this way already!

What I’ve done is made a BUNCH of clip art image pairs: a fox and a box, a goat and a boat, a bug and a rug, and so forth. Every week I choose four rhyming pairs that match our theme in some way, and put them up on the flannelboard. As I put the pictures on the flannelboard, I talk about them a little bit. I talk a LOT in Baby Storytime! I like to model to the parents how you can chatter away with a little one who isn’t responding yet verbally.

Then we sing the song four times. For every verse, we bounce the babies on our laps for the first line, then give them hugs and snuggles for the last two lines.

What Does It Look Like?

Here’s our set for a Things That Go storytime. For this one I’ll put the vehicles up first, “Look! Here’s a red Jeep. A Jeep is a kind of a car. Here’s a green boat that floats on the water.” Etc. Then, “Here’s a sheep for the Jeep and a goat for the boat…” And then we bounce and sing!

For our Dr. Seuss storytime, we started with a cat and a hat, but there’s the mouse and fox from Green Eggs and Ham, and a fish for One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish!

For my Dinosaur storytime, I chose big things: the house, the whale, the tree. For a Wiggles storytime, you could choose the bug and the ants and the bee. I never try too hard to match things up, and sometimes just one animal or object will relate to the theme, and I’ll just choose any pairs for the rest.

Stay and Play

The other thing we do with these flannel pieces is play with them after storytime! We have time to stay and play after storytime is over, and I get out some soft balls and rings or scarves and shakers for the babies and grown-ups to explore together. I also set the flannelboard on the floor and put out the rhyme pairs we used that day. The babies LOVE to put them on and take them off, and it’s such an easy way for the grown-ups to start a conversation with their little ones! “Which picture do you have? It’s a sheep! What does a sheep say? What else do you want to put on the board? Oh, the dish!” The older kids can start to match the pictures by rhyme, too.

Repeating for a Reason!

One of my favorite stories about this song is when a mom came in to storytime one morning, and said, “Miss Melissa, I have to tell you, we were at the zoo this weekend, and ALL we did was sing “A Hunting We Would Go” about all the different animals!”

I laughed and started to apologize (that’s a lot of verses, after all!) but then I caught myself and said, “That’s why we sing it over and over every week, so you guys can learn it by heart!”

Rhyming games are EXCELLENT for our little ones’ brains, and help them get ready to sound words out when they start to read. “A Hunting We Will Go,” “Down By the Bay,” and “Willoughby Wallaby Woo” are just the type of songs that grow with our kids, from bouncing and listening as babies to making up their own rhymes and verses as preschoolers. Hooray!

That’s Great, Mel, Where’s the File?

(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. I found these animal cartoons in Microsoft Word clip art, but they are no longer available there, which is a shame since they are so charming. You can search your favorite clip art sites for animal images you like, and then search for rhyming images.)