Five Clean and Dirty Pigs!

There are several different sets of the piggies on the Flannel Friday Pinterest farm animal board and I'm adding my set to the mix! I use these with 2 different rhymes; Five Clean and Dirty Pigs (tune of Five Green and Speckled Frogs) and 10 Little Pigs Rolled in the Mud. I just say 5 instead of 10 and it works just as well! 

My piggies are double sided. They are pink and clean on one side and light brown and dirty on the other. Getting those tails to line up was the trickiest part of these little pigs! But, now we are ready for some piggy fun!! I have a couple of other piggy posts here and here. There are more great posts on the Flannel Friday Roundup. Check out the wonderful resources on the Flannel Friday Pinterest Boards. If you want more info about Flannel Friday here's the link for the official Flannel Friday blog.

In My Little Red Wagon

We recently did a very fun 'Little Red Wagon' storytime theme.  Our mascot Harvey was the star of the Home Extension/craft that we offered and the first rhyme/activity was about him.  Miss Debbie had found Google images of objects that rhyme and we printed them and laminated them and then cut them out. I had a miniature red wagon that we pretended that Harvey was pulling with the objects in them. We would pull out an object and show it and discuss it and add it to the felt board then bring out the next object and point out that they rhymed! There was a lot of discussion about the different things in Harvey's wagon!


Here's the rhyme that Miss Margaret made up for this activity:

Wagon Flannel Game

(by Margaret Vaughan)

Walking along pulling his wagon behind,  

Look and see. What did Harvey find?

We had :  flower - shower ; log - dog ; book - hook ; pickle -nickle ; rock - sock ; and some random pics of items. Miss Margaret also made a cute flannel set of 5 colored wagons to play a version of the 'Little Mouse hiding in a colored house' game with a Google image of a dragon. Our flannel board has gotten a little bit slick so we added velcro to the back of the wagons. 

We sang Bumping Up and Down by Raffi and we used the parachute to sing and move to Old Brass Wagon (Wee Sing). Playing with a little red wagon is so much Fun With Friends at Storytime. There are more great posts on the Flannel Friday Roundup. Check out the wonderful resources on the Flannel Friday Pinterest Boards. If you want more info about Flannel Friday here's the link for the official Flannel Friday blog.

Family Hero Fingerpuppets

Last week Miss Margaret showed me an adorable blogpost about Two Little Superheroes @ Sunflower Storytime and I just couldn't leave well enough alone. Ha! We are doing a week of Family as Heroes so I adapted the rhyme to reflect family members and different colored capes/outfits. There is a link in that blogpost for a printable set of capes and masks from Hello Bee. They are so cute but I adapted them to make my Family Hero Fingerpuppets. I decided to make the fingerpuppet and cape the color that I needed and to make the head as if the family member is wearing a full hooded outfit. I'll probably eventually add some hair to some of them. And maybe a mustache for Papa fingerpuppet!  Anyway, using some glue and fabric paint and tiny google eyes I made a set of felt Happy Hero Family Finger Puppets!  Here's a link for a short rhyme inspired by 'There Was an Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe' that I adapted for our Hero Family Theme. The link includes the rhymes for the fingerpuppets inspired by the Two Little Blackbirds rhyme to use with the fingerpuppets:      Happy Hero Family!

There are great posts on the Flannel Friday Roundup this week. Check out the wonderful resources on the Flannel Friday Pinterest Boards. If you want more info about Flannel Friday here's the link for the official Flannel Friday blog.

Super Heroes Read Books!

Here's a link for my latest Super hero Rhyme:  Superheroes Read Books. I was inspired by Storytime Katie's Five Little Books. Because I have Superheroes on the brain for the summer, I thought about having my super guys and gals check out books....I know it seems random but that's what really happened!!  I made my own pattern by looking at Katie's felt set and decided to add super hero titles to my set. We are planning to have a lot of fun with these this summer! 

Superheroes and checking out books are so much Fun With Friends at Storytime!! There are great posts on the Flannel Friday Roundup this week. Check out the wonderful resources on the Flannel Friday Pinterest Boards. If you want more info about Flannel Friday here's the link for the official Flannel Friday blog.

Pretty Color Birds (filefolder)

Here's a quick easy filefolder rhyme to use as a color recognition activity. I traced the bird shape on the filefolder and cut it out. I added white paper cloud shapes and a brown construction paper branch before I laminated the folder. Then I traced the features on the lamination with a Sharpie. The cloud shapes could just as easily be green and be leaves. I've had this rhyme a long time and can't remember where I originally found it. This activity covers two of the ECRR components: Talking and Playing. I have another bird post here with some cute finger puppets.

Color Birds

Blue bird, blue bird,
High in a tree,
How many blue things can you see?

Repeat for other colors.

Talk about the objects in the room or outside the window or on the children's clothing, or even other things that the children know is that color.

Pretty Color Birds are so much Fun With Friends at Storytime! There are more great posts on the Flannel Friday Roundup this week. Check out the wonderful resources on the Flannel Friday Pinterest Boards. If you want more info about Flannel Friday here's the link for the official Flannel Friday blog.

Bzzzz...Said the Bee!

I have a felt set...well, really a Pellon set of animals to use with the text of this great book! I think I adapted the animal patterns from Felt Board Fingerplays many years ago to use for this set. If I could only have 1 resource for storytime this is the book I would have! I have used this book A LOT!! So I made my Pellon animals and colored them with crayons. I did add a tiny google eye to the bee. I had the text of this Easy Reader book typed out and used the animals on the board. It's easy peasy and lots of fun! I'm sure the minimal text and simple plots of a lot of Easy Readers would lend themselves to being adapted to flannel board stories. Hmmm.... I'll need to do some more research on that! This little story would go well with any farm theme and this song that I posted HERE.

Bees and farm animals are a lot of Fun with Friends at Storytime! There are other great ideas on the Flannel Friday Roundup this week. Check out the wonderful resources on the Flannel Friday Pinterest Boards. If you want more info about Flannel Friday here's the link for the official Flannel Friday blog.

There Was A Bold Lady That Wanted a Star

This week I did a 'Rocket' theme and wanted to use this really fun book! This book could work for several themes. You could use it with a transportation theme or stars or space. The pictures are detailed and a little bit small so I made my felt pieces big and used them as I read the book. I found this pattern set to download from The ALA website from the great resource book,  Storytime Magic.  I tweaked them a little and used the set this week and it was a BIG hit! I heard ooohhhs and aaahhhs when I put the jar with the star in it on the board. I had taken the star off the board and pretended to put it in my pocket. I had the jar piece sitting in my lap and so I just added it to the jar as I was putting it on the flannel board. This turned out better than I had hoped! That's always a win!! I started with the small glittered star in the top corner of the felt board then I lined the pieces up from top to bottom with the rocket and jar at the bottom.  You could just as easily line them up from bottom to top as it is in the book. I just made the pieces that she bought in her quest to get to the star that was so far...away. I made the shoes and skates big! I made my own pattern for the shoes and skates by looking at the pictures in the book. The bicycle was a little tricky! But, it turned out to be my favorite piece of the set. I made my own pattern for the big jar too. Can you tell I like for my pieces to be big? LOL!

I offered  a Home extension so that the kiddos could make a rocket-in-space picture to remember our fun rocket theme. The rockets are diecuts. I taped pieces of Christmas tinsel to the bottom as the 'fire' exhaust. The fireworks foam stickers were leftover from another activity. We also had some SRP stickers leftover that had a rocket on them that I handed out and the kiddos were so happy to get them! 

We sang Laurie Berkner's really fun song, Rocketship Run. I heard one of the little boys singing it as we were checking out books after storytime. Ha! That's why I do what I do! I can't believe I get paid to have this much fun! 

Rockets are so much Fun With Friends at Storytime!! There are more great posts on the Flannel Friday Roundup. Check out the wonderful resources on the Flannel Friday Pinterest Boards. If you want more info about Flannel Friday here's the link for the official Flannel Friday blog.