Pizza for Thanksgiving!

Gobble! Gobble! Gobble!  What does a turkey want for Thanksgiving Day? Pizza for everyone! I saw this adorable set by Ms Monica @ Ram Sam Storytime and fell in love. Here's my version of the turkeys and pizza for our storytime fun! Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Since our featured book, Turkey Trouble ends with everyone eating pizza, and the flannel set ends with pizza, and we had some leftover craft sets to make paper pizzas....guess what the kiddos got for their Home Extension? If you guessed paper pizza you are Right!

Turkey and Pizza are yummy and a lot of Fun with Friends for Storytime! You'll want to see the rest of this week's Flannel Friday Roundup HERE. Have questions about Flannel Friday? Check out the Flannel Friday official blog. Be sure to check out the Flannel Friday Facebook page too!

Going on a Turkey Hunt!

Thanksgiving is my FAVORITE holiday.  There's no big hype leading up to it, no presents, just, family, food and fun!! I wish Christmas was celebrated this way too! Anyway... I mentioned this Turkey rhyme/activity from Mommy and Me Book Club blog in my Thanksgiving post last year. I like it because it's versatile. It can be done with colored turkeys (I use felt Ellison diecuts) to be added to the board by the presenter or the children. It can also be done with a file folder!  There's lots to discuss with this rhyme! Here's a link to a Google doc of the rhyme that you could print out. Going On a Turkey Hunt!  

I guess you can't take the preschool teacher out of the girl. LOL.  Here's a learning game/activity that I made with some foam shapes and the copier.  I just put the pieces on the glass and laid a white paper behind them and printed them on yellow paper then laminated it on a piece of brown construction paper.  The copy was not in color. It was interesting to see  how some children approached this.  I used this when I taught preschool, but it could be a quiet activity for the early birds to do while waiting for storytime to start.  I've also made matching games with diecut shapes and seasonal stickers that I laminate and cut out and offer to the kiddos. So easy and fun too.

I also have a very simple craft/Home extension that is super easy prep and the children really like it. I show the kiddos my finished turkey before I hand out the turkey body and let the children pick 5 colored "feathers" for their turkey's tail. I suggest to the caregivers that the turkey can be attached to a toilet paper roll and will stand up.  I have programmed a sheet of paper with 3 of the turkey bodies so that I can stack and cut out several of them at a time. Prep for the week for 5 storytimes can take maybe 30 min. or an hour.  Easy, Peasy!!  Since the feathers are so easy to cut 3 or 4 at a time, I cut out A LOT and spread them out on one of our small tables.  This craft involves counting and decision making and the children have some control by choosing the colors they want.  I give the caregivers a little pep talk before I do this by telling them that making choices (within reason and when appropriate) builds connections in the brain and helps the kiddos learn to have self control. Having fun and building a brain...pretty amazing! 
Going on a Turkey Hunt is a lot of  Fun with Friends at Storytime!
You'll want to see the rest of this week's Flannel Friday Roundup HERE. Have questions about Flannel Friday? Check out the Flannel Friday official blog. Be sure to check out the Flannel Friday Facebook page too!

Little Forest Animals

This post originally went with my camping theme but you could use it with MANY themes. I use my Beanie Baby animals but I also have clipart pictures of the animals.  This is a riddle/rhyme I made up a couple of years ago when our summer theme was Dig Into Reading. It turned out to be a lot of fun and there is a lot of learning/thinking going on too! Here's the link for the rhyme: Little Forest Animals. You could easily add more forest animals to guess; an owl, or beaver, or deer...This theme would be a great time to use my Hedgehog flannel set too! Forest Animals are so much Fun with Friends at Storytime!

You'll want to see the rest of this week's Flannel Friday Roundup HERE. Have questions about Flannel Friday? Check out the Flannel Friday official blog. Be sure to check out the Flannel Friday Facebook page too!

Camping Out!

Going camping is a really fun theme and really resonates with children. The idea of sleeping in a tent and being outside all the time is very appealing! I've got a not-a-flannel rhyme/activity that I used with my preschoolers and they really enjoyed it.  I saw this technique originally @ Mel's desk with farm animals and tweaked it to a tent shape with items you'd see out camping.  I set it up by showing and talking about the matching big pictures first.  Talking is one of our ECRR components! It's easier to manage these big pictures with a dot of velcro on the back and add them to the flannelboard as you talk and then as you say the rhyme. We did this twice so that the kiddos could get a sense of mastery and for the fine motor practice. Here's the link for the rhyme; Camping Song.   My pictures below make the tent shape look yellow, but it's really orange. I found some Google images that I scaled small for the tent and large for me. Making multiples is easy if you program a sheet with four rows of the small pictures. I used my little laminator, cut them out and we were ready for FUN!!  This also gave the caregivers an idea for some fun at home/preschool that would strengthen those fine motor muscles. I suggested paper plates programmed with shapes or colors or numbers...the possibilities are almost endless.         
Camping is a lot of Fun with Friends at Storytime! 

You'll want to see the rest of this week's Flannel Friday Roundup HERE. Have questions about Flannel Friday? Check out the Flannel Friday official blog. Be sure to check out the Flannel Friday Facebook page too!

Flannel Friday Roundup for 10/10/14

I'm glad to be hosting the Flannel Friday Roundup for October 10th. The generous spirit of these bloggers inspires me and affirms my impulse to collaborate and share with my fellow storytime presenting-preschooler loving- picture book reading-flannelboard enthusiasts! 
Woo-hoo! Happy Friday ya'll!!

Nikki @heytherelibrary has a beautiful set for Caps for Sale to share; including how-to's!

Oh My Goodness!! Miss Tara @Storytime with Miss Tara and Friends has got a post chock-full of Halloween fun including an adorable song!

Fresh from presenting at the Ohio Library Council's Convention and Expo comes a great post on using one felt set in more than one way from Library Village. 

Anne @itsybitsymom reminds us of a great game to play with the kiddos at storytime! This is an excellent way to get those little brains working!

In honor of National Hispanic Heritage Month, Jane @Piper Loves the Library has a song and some resources to share! Muy Bueno!

Bridget @What is Bridget Reading? has a fun game with adorable crocheted pieces. Great minds must think alike! (see above, Library Village)  Bridget uses pieces from other sets to make this game.

 Storytime Katie has a fun matching activity with fancy, cute socks inspired by Miss Mary Liberry!

Hooray for Katie @Felt Board Magic! She is posting about a wonderful resource...Her Feltboard Song eBook! 

I'm continuing the theme of this roundup of games and activities and how-to's with my post about Candy @Fun With Friends at Storytime! 

Thanks everyone for sharing your great ideas! Next week's host will be Lisa from Thrive after Three. Have questions about Flannel Friday? Check the official blog for answers! Be sure to join us on the Flannel Friday Facebook page!

Trick or Treat Candy

I was looking at the Halloween blogposts, and I looked through all my Halloween sets and found very few, almost no, rhymes about candy! Oh My! That's one of the main reasons for Halloween for children. The dressing up is fun but the free candy is the best! I found a cute candy song video HERE. Mr. Al has a song about candy on his CD, Kids Wanna Rock. Well, I did some thinking and rhyming and came up with an interactive rhyme I called, Trick or Treat Candy.
You can do this two different ways. 
You can tell the kiddos that we are pretending that the board is our Trick or Treat bag and they can bring their colored candy piece to stick on the flannelboard. Or you could have a Halloween treat bag or plastic pumpkin and have the kiddos drop their colored candy piece in it. The kiddos that come to my storytime like to see the flannelboard full with all the pieces that they brought up. You could instruct them to line up the colored pieces and essentially make a graph. Then you could count the different colors and see which is the most or least. I can slightly control where the pieces go by placing the first piece as I say the color and then I 'help' the kiddos find a place on the board for their piece. I say, "Let's make a line with our pieces." Sometimes, a child that brings up their piece will realign another piece that isn't quite straight in the line. LOL!  Usually once they see the first color in a row, they add their piece after mine right in the row. 

I used a Google image to program a sheet of paper to make copies on colored cardstock and bright paper. I laminated them with my small laminator and cut them out and added a small piece of velcro (hook side) to the back. Now we're ready for some candy Fun with Friends at Storytime!

Check out the rest of the blogposts for Flannel Friday HERE! Have questions about Flannel Friday? Check out the Flannel Friday official blog.  Be sure to join us on the Flannel Friday Facebook page and enjoy the great Flannel Friday Pinterest boards too!

Morning on the Farm

 

There are so many fun books about Farm that you could use it for the overall theme for a month! Actually, I've done that before. The first week I did general Farm books. The second week I did Chicken books. That was an excuse to use Laurie Berkner's song, ' I Know a Chicken' and use the shaky eggs! The third week I did Pig books and the fourth week I did Sheep books.  I guess I could have continued with Cow or Tractor or Seeds or Veggies.  There are so many great books to choose from. Also, there are so many great songs to use too! There's the classic 'Old MacDonald had a Farm'. It's not technically about a farm but 'Cat Goes Fiddle-i-fee' has all the farm animals. I have a new favorite song now from Nancy Stewart. It's her song, 'When Ducks Get Up in the Morning'.  I think I first saw it mentioned on one of the Flannel Friday blogposts...but I can't remember which?! Anyway, since I have access to some great Ellison farm animal diecuts I decided to make the song an interactive activity. So I cut out about 5 or 6 of 6 different farm animals and handed them out to the kiddos. As we sang about that animal the children holding the matching animal diecut brought it up to the board. I tried a different way to do this with a small group of 2's and young 3's. I was able to give them all the same animal and they had to wait for me to say the sound that the animal makes to bring up their diecut. Waiting and listening for the sound before they could get up was challenging for one of the little kiddos. It didn't take long though, he got the hang of it and could sit on the edge of his chair and wait for the animal sound! I had as much fun as they did!! Playing is one of the ECRR components that we model in our storytimes. Now, I'm thinking a set of jungle/zoo animals might be next on my to-do list. The song is really easy to learn so that you don't have to have the music and you can improvise as you like. Be sure to check out some of the other great Farm/farm animal ideas on the Flannel Friday Pinterest boards.

Farm animals are a lot of Fun with Friends at Storytime! Check out the rest of the roundup  @ Library Village. Have questions about Flannel Friday? Check out the Flannel Friday official blog.  Be sure to  join us on the Flannel Friday Facebook page too.