Birthday Candles!

Everyone loves birthday cake and candles! This is a fun and easy theme for storytime. I have links for 2 different counting candle rhymes: Five Candles and Ten Birthday Candles.  I have a cake shape made from pellon with white ric-rac trim and a red 'platter' to use with both rhymes. I made 2 different sets of birthday candles.  One set is based on the number shaped candles that you can buy for birthday cakes. The other set is a basic candle shape with added glitter!  There are some really great birthday ideas on the Flannel Friday Pinterest board.  Birthdays are so much Fun with Friends at Storytime!

The rest of the Flannel Friday roundup is @Storytiming. Have questions about Flannel Friday? Check out the Flannel Friday official blog. Be sure to join us on the Flannel Friday Facebook page too!  

Balloons say Happy Birthday!

Birthdays are so much fun for preschoolers. This is a great theme that offers lots of opportunities for fun flannel sets. I've got a not-a-flannel set of balloons to share.  I made my set from laminated paper with pipe cleaner 'strings' and a small piece of velcro on the back. I like the shiny look from the lamination, plus the last balloon can be programmed with the colorful words that say, "Happy Birthday". You could also play, "Which One is Missing?" with this set.  This could be a cute file folder set. Here's the link for the rhyme - Birthday Balloons.

We offered a home extension for this storytime. It's a crown that I saw on Pinterest that we adapted for our theme. We prepped the paper plate crowns and gave the kiddos some holograph stickers and paper birthday candles to decorate their birthday hats! This is super easy prep for a lot of kiddo fun!! 

This is one of my favorite author/illustrators. Our library copy of this book is too small for using in Storytime, so I scanned and enlarged it and mounted the pages on black construction paper and laminated them. I typed out the script and mounted each page's text on the back of the laminated sheet. The last 2 pages I mounted on a larger sheet of construction paper for the impact of the Happy Birthday! This is a big hit with the kiddos! 
Happy Birthday is a LOT of Fun with Friends at Storytime!!   

The rest of the Flannel Friday Roundup is @ Literary Commentary.  Have questions about Flannel Friday? Check out the Flannel Friday official blog. Be sure to check out the Flannel Friday Facebook page too! 

Shape Up!

I like Ellen Stoll Walsh's books! Check out this post at Read, Rhyme and Sing for some other Walsh inspired sets. I especially like Mouse Shapes. Our copy of the book is not as big as I like so I enhanced it a little.  I made some felt pieces to use as I read the book to my kiddos at storytime. I enlarged the pictures about 129% and used them as my patterns. I did use my sizzix diecut for the circles because they are just so hard to cut out. The pieces are glued to the white felt 'pages' on both sides. My coworker suggested that it would be easier to handle these pieces that way as I held the book too! I'm looking forward to the discussion we'll have as we see what these little mice can make out of shapes! Here's another way to make this set @ Read Rabbit Read. 

Mice and Shapes are a lot of Fun with Friends at Storytime! 

Get in Shape!

I'm starting the year off with a basic theme of Shapes! I saw this post about Summer Shapes @ Mel's Desk and loved the idea of using shapes to make seasonal items. I decided to make a winter set for our shape theme.  I've got circles for a snowman, a square shape for his hat, triangles for trees, a rectangle for a sled and for tree trunks. This game/activity will go well with the book, Shape Capers!

We have a Home Extension craft with this theme. A coworker programmed a paper with pictures of our mascot, Harvey and 5 different shapes. I diecut the circle, star, and heart shapes with my Sizzix diecuts. Squares and triangles are quick easy cutouts with the paper cutter.  The kiddos can play a matching game and then glue the shapes on their paper. Shapes are a lot of Fun with Friends at Storytime! Check out the rest of the Flannel Friday roundup @ so tomorrow for great ideas. Have questions about Flannel Friday? Check out the Flannel Friday official blog. Be sure to check out the Flannel Friday Facebook page too!

Gossie and Gertie

When we were planning to do a friendship theme for storytime, I happened to be doing some research on Jane's blog, Piper Loves the Library.  Lo and behold, there was an adorable post about two best friends, Gossie and Gertie.  Oh Happy Day! It was exactly what we needed for the toddler storytime kiddos! I made a felt set of Gossie and Gertie. Then I scanned, enlarged, printed and laminated the pages from the little book to tell the story. I put the script from the story on the back of each page with cues for the felt pieces at appropriate places. This turned out to be easy to present and a big hit! Thanks, Jane, for the inspiration!

I have so much Fun with Friends at Storytime! Check out the rest of the Flannel Friday roundup @ What is Bridget Reading? for great ideas. Have questions about Flannel Friday? Check out the Flannel Friday official blog. Be sure to check out the Flannel Friday Facebook page too!

Let's Be Friends!

We used this theme as a Thanksgiving tie-in. There are so many great 'friend' books that this theme would be easy to do any time of year. I like to do it at Valentine's too.  I used my pellon set of 10 little children/friends that I made many years ago. I'd really like to either, remake them bigger out of pellon, or try making the set out of felt. I'll just add that to my to-do pile ;) I made up a quick little 'counting to 10' rhyme to use with them and then used them to play, "Which One Is Missing?" after the rhyme. To make this a little easier for younger preschoolers you could use only 5 of the easiest colors; red, blue, green, yellow and pink. I think (it was a really long time ago) I used illustrations from the book, The Best of Totline Newsletter edit. by Jean Warren;  illustrated by Kathy Kotomaimoce.This is an awesome resource!! 

Here's the link for the rhyme 10 Friends Today.

We made Harvey's Friend name badges as our Home Extension. These were laminated so that we could add the kiddos' names and some double-sided tape for each of our storytime friends.  This was so much Fun with Friends at Storytime!
Check out the rest of the Flannel Friday roundup @ What is Bridget Reading? for great ideas. Have questions about Flannel Friday? Check out the Flannel Friday official blog. Be sure to check out the Flannel Friday Facebook page too!   

Christmas Candles Shining Bright

I so enjoy Christmas picture books.  I really enjoy Christmas storytimes although we don't program in December anymore. Thank goodness I have grandchildren that I can do 'storytime' with at my home.  I have a set of 10 Christmas Candles that is fun for counting to 10, and then subtracting again. 

Here is the link to print the rhyme; Ten Christmas Candles.

I hotglued the yellow felt flames to a gold glitter pipe cleaner piece and the pipe cleaner to the white felt candle. I also hotglued the green felt holly pieces and used red slick fabric paint for the berries. Check out the other posts on Flannel Friday @ Mel's Desk. There are some really cute ideas on the Flannel Friday Christmas Pinterest board. Check it out here! Have questions about Flannel Friday? Check out the Flannel Friday official blog.  Merry Christmas!