Flannel Friday April 11th 2014

I am delighted to once again be hosting all of the delightful ideas, tips, and tricks for this week's Flannel Friday. There's some great stuff this week (as usual!). Clip-art, flannel--the materials don't matter so much as how you use it!  And here we go:

Think Spring! Photo Credit: 'Ajnagraphy' via Compfight cc

Props, Games, and Other

Linda from Notes from the Story Room presents something new and exciting--an original "Origami and Tell" story, Sally Square that combines shapes, storytelling, and origami!

Over at Itsybitsymom, Anne shares a very simply stoplight prop and a fun Stoplight Song game that will work perfectly with those itsy bitsy storytimers.

Flannelboard Stories, Rhymes, and Songs

Ms. Kelly at the Library shares her lovely summer (think green!) butterflies for Five Little Butterflies 

Get out your glitter glue and fancy felt, Kathryn's update to her story, A Gift for Mommy will satisfy all your glittery needs.

It's always nice to see Melissa, the brains behind Flannel Friday, return to us! This week, she shares some cutie cute (and quick!) Rainbow Ducklings

Jenna from Stories with Ms. Jenna demonstrates the valuable technique of reusing flannel pieces you've already made to tell new stories in her version of The Old Woman and Her Pig

Book Adaptations

Miss Tara takes on a project I've always wanted to do, but have been too daunted to take on! She does a simply gorgeous job adapting Caps For Sale to felt!

Miss Kristen from Library Village does a lovely job using clip art to adapt a too-small-for storytime book, Owen's Marshmallow Chick.

Another adaptation of a too-small-for-storytime book, this time a board book, comes from Lisa at Libraryland: Orange Triangle Fox--a great choice for a shape or color storytime.

Lisa at Thrive Over Three demonstrates how out-of-print books can have new life through flannel board adaptations in her reworking of the superhero(!) story, Captain Pajamas

Inspired by Flannel Friday

Let's all fall down the "inspired by Flannel Friday" rabbit-hole with Katie at Storytime Katie, with her happy, sunny (SUN!) Five Little Starfish

Another delightful version of the classic, "Monkey Face." This time from Kathryn at Fun with Friends at Storytime shares her sassy version.

Check out our Pinterest boards for hundreds of other ideas!

Flannel Friday--Naptime Chickens

I am SO excited to share this one. Last fall I asked my colleague Tami to share some of her flannels for a presentation I was working on, and she shared her Naptime Chicken with me. IT'S SOOOO CUTE. I finally made my own version, and here it is:

It's a full hand puppet, with a set of finger puppets that attach with velcro. Tami found the pattern online a few years ago, and saved the image, but no amount of Googling or reverse image searching led us to the original source. I'm afraid the blog she found it on was taken down. We searched diligently for the original source, but this is too cute not to share!

“Come little chickens,” calls Mother Hen (beckoning motion)

“It’s time to take your nap again.”

And under her feathers the small chicks creep. (velcro chick onto palm part of hen puppet)

And she clucks a song til they fall asleep (fold fingers to cover chicks, and make rocking motion while clucking a lullaby).

My favorite part about this is clucking the lullaby at the end. I made a Vine to give you the idea, but since there's sound I will link to it instead of embedding it. Check it out here. I love songs and rhymes like this that give us a good opportunity to be silly. I like clucking, "Rock a Bye Baby" or "Brahms Lullaby" for maximum silliness. For some reason, this is one that parents really get into too--score!

Themes: Farm, sleep/night, dinosaurs (closest living relative!), birds, singing. 

I took the liberty of creating a template for this flannel set. If you'd like it, please email me and I will send you a PDF.  My gmail address is opinionsbyanna.

And finally, if you know where this came from originally, please let me know!

This week's Flannel Friday Roundup is hosted by Katie at Storytime Secrets. To participate in upcoming roundups, or just find out what's what, check out the Flannel Friday Blog. 

Ultimate Spy Challenge

This is an old post that I wrote, and, for some reason, never published. This was the culmination of my super fun and successful Spy Week that I did last spring break. I wrote about the passive station I did all week here and here, and this post is about the drop-in Spy Party I did on the last day.

This was a super easy activity, that went over REALLY well: fingerprinting.

This amuses me greatly: Chicken disguise

Program outline:

Here's another example of my planning process, which I talk about here. In this case, I decided to save one of the activities for a different program (Angry Birds), since I realized I was over planning for this one.

• Nametages with spy names (Mr. or Ms. plus a color or initial)
• Laser course (red yarn)
• Observation test: This was really popular. I had a tray full of random items. The kids would look at it for 10-20 seconds, and then I would remove something and they would try to remember what was missing. They played it independently too, taking turns being the guesser and the hider. 
• The disguise station was basically just paper crafts--make a hat, beard, or other disguise
• Leftovers was items I had already created for the passive station
• Book display: I had them take 5-10 minutes and look at the books I had on spies and codes. Then they wrote a cool fact on the poster paper I had out. 
• Two Truths and Lie--regular game that was a good fit for the program. 
• Lying Game--I don't remember what this was!

See the post here for a list of all my resources and credit for many of the ideas I used.