Flannel Friday-Unicorn Finger Puppet

Okay, I'll be honest-this didn't start as a story time project.  It came out of a Secret Santa gift.  When I finished it, I thought that it would be great for Flannel Friday.

Honestly, who doesn't need a unicorn finger puppet?  To make your own, grab some felt and this pattern.  To make it look really nice, you can use a blanket stitch to put it all together (tutorial found here).  Tacky glue would also work.  If you get really good and make five of them, you can do this nifty rhyme.

Five little unicorns playing in the sun.

The first one said, "I'm having lots of fun."

The second one said, "See my shiny horn."
The third one said, "Of course, you're a unicorn."

The fourth one said, "I am as white as the snow."

The fifth one said, "So are we, you know."

 

This week's round-up is at Miss Courtney Meets Bobo. There will be a 2 week holiday break, then I will be hosting January 4.  Feel free to start crafting early!



Toddler Crafts-Holiday Crafts

This holiday season we ran a toddler crafts program for 26 2 & 3 year olds.  The important things to remember when running a toddler craft program are to focus on one skill per craft and to have everything set up ahead of time.  To see how we set up our toddler craft program, check here for a previous post.

Craft 1: Christmas Tree Ornaments
I have recently found that paint samples are a great craft supply, especially when working with young children.  For this craft, we used Behr green paint samples (the one with Jungle Green at the bottom).  If you ask, your local Home Depot paint department will help you out, especially if you are in the same area as their store.  Cut your sample into a triangle shape and punch a hole at the top.  We prestrung all of our samples so all the kids had to do was add stickers.  Oriental Trading sold us Christmas mini stickers, which fit perfectly on our trees to decorate them.  They were also easy to peel for little hands.  The parents loved this craft and many mentioned that they would also be visiting Home Depot for their own green paint samples!

 

 

Craft 2: Paper Bag Snowman

As with most of our crafts, we had all of the snowman's parts precut and inside of the white paper bag.  A pattern is available here.  The kids' job was to glue the parts onto the white paper bag.  The results of this craft were surprisingly fun as the kids came up with their own ideas of what the snowman should look like.  Some flipped their bag over and made their snowman into a puppet.  One kid used the red hatband as the snowman's mouth and the extra black circles as buttons because their snowman needed a smile.

 

 

 

 

 

 



Flannel Friday-The Runaway Cookie Parade

I don't know about you, but for me, one of the most fun parts of the holiday season is the cookie baking.  Here's a cookie flannelboard that can fit holiday or cookie story times.  It could also work with patterns.

This flannelboard is on pages 163-164 of The Complete Book of Activities, Games, Stories, Props, Recipes, and Dances by Pamela Schiller.  We keep our copy in professional reference because there is a lot of good stuff in here (really, you should interloan a copy if you don't have it).  Due to copyright, I can't tell you the whole story, but here are the basics.

A girl named Linda made 5 different cookie shapes-a duck, a rabbit, a dog, a cat, and a bear.  Then she decorated them fancy-with dots, stripes, swirls, x's, and plaid.  (I also like the matching aspect of this story.)  At the end of the story, after all of the cookies are in the cookie jar, they sneak out and dance away.

Cate is hosting this week's round-up at Storytiming.  Have a great week!

Santa Claus, Santa Claus

Welcome to Holiday Round-Up week!  I will be showing you Santa Claus, Santa Claus, What Do You See?  This is a great flannelboard that I have been using through my whole career because it works with a variety of group sizes and ages.  I will even pull it out when we have Santa visit our library for a group of 75.

The images are all clip art in Microsoft Publisher.  Because there are 12 of them, I number the backs (so I know what is coming next) and number my rhyme sheet (so I can match the right item).

(To the tune of Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?)

Santa Claus, Santa Claus, what do you see?
I see a Christmas sleigh looking at me.

Christmas sleigh, Christmas sleigh, what do you see?

I see Rudolph looking at me.

Rudolph, Rudolph, what do you see?

I see a Christmas stocking looking at me.

Christmas stocking, Christmas stocking, what do you see?

I see a Christmas tree looking at me.

Christmas tree, Christmas tree, what do you see?

I see a Christmas bell looking at me.

Christmas bell, Christmas bell, what do you see?

I see a golden star looking at me.

Golden star, golden star, what do you see?

I see a Christmas ornament looking at me.

Christmas ornament, Christmas ornament what do you see?

I see a candy cane looking at me.

Candy cane, candy cane, what do you see?

I see a gingerbread boy looking at me.

Gingerbread boy, gingerbread boy, what do you see?

I see a Christmas present looking at me.

Christmas present, Christmas present, what do you see?

I see children looking at me.

Children, children, what do you see?

We see Santa Claus, a Christmas sleigh, Rudolph, a Christmas tree, a Christmas bell, a golden star, a Christmas ornament, a candy cane, a gingerbread boy, and a Christmas present looking at us.

The Holiday Round-Up is hosted by Linda at Notes from the Story Room.  For more Flannel Friday fun, check out the Flannel Friday blog or Pinterest page!

Flannel Friday-Toot Toot!

A couple of years ago I was planning a sensory story time and ran across this rhyme on an ALSC blog post.  I loved it so much that I "borrowed" it and used clip art and pictures to make the artwork for the flannelized version.  What I really like about this rhyme is the pairing of foods and the critical thinking skills that kids use when coming up with replies.  After all, what can you make with a smooshed peanut?  How about an apple?  There are many directions that you can take this from just saying the original rhyme to adding more verses with the kids.  Trust me, they will come up with MANY ideas.

The rhyme goes:

 

A peanut sat on the railroad track; its heart was all a-flutter

The five-fifteen came rushing by-Toot! Toot! Peanut butter!

 

A lemon sat on the railroad track; its heart was all a-flutter

The five-fifteen came rushing by-Toot! Toot! Lemonade!

 

 

 



A pea sat on the railroad track; its heart was all a-flutter

The five-fifteen came rushing by-Toot! Toot! Split pea soup!

 

 

 

An apple sat on the railroad track; its heart was all a-flutter

The five-fifteen came rushing by-Toot! Toot! Applesauce!

 

 

 

A strawberry sat on the railroad track; its heart was all a-flutter

The five-fifteen came rushing by-Toot! Toot! Strawberry jam!

 

If you are saying the rhyme, it makes it more fun if you pause after saying "Toot! Toot"  This gives the kids a chance to guess (or think about guessing).

 

Loons and Quines is hosting this week's round-up.  Stop on by!

Flannel Friday-The Shirt Song

I was reminded of a great song for story time this week while sitting in a session at the Michigan Library Association Annual Conference.  This song works really well with smaller groups or sensory story times (I got the idea from a special needs story time webinar).

To start off, you will need a whole bunch of flannel shirts in different colors.  This is a great excuse to raid your scrap bins!  Ask the kids to come up and pick out their color shirt from the stack and add it to the flannelboard.  As they add it, sing the song below.

To the tune of Mary Wore a Red Shirt



 

Lisa wore a purple shirt,

Purple shirt, purple shirt.

Lisa wore a purple shirt

All day long.

 

The next verse would be whatever color shirt the next child picks out.  Since you are singing a song with names, it helps if the kids either wear nametags or if you introduce yourselves as they come in the room.  To give credit where credit is due, this song came to me via Barabara Klipper from The Ferguson Library.

 

This week's Flannel Friday round-up is hosted by Future Librarian Superhero.  Have a great week!

 

 



Flannel Friday-Thanksgiving Extravaganza

As a part of the Flannel Friday Thanksgiving Extravaganza, I bring you Turkey Feathers.  I like this rhyme because you can give every kid in your program a feather and they can place it on the board.  I found this rhyme in Felt Board Fingerplays by Dick and Liz Wilmes, but I didn't use their patterns for the feathers.  Since I was making so many, I found a feather AccuCut die at our local MISD and used it to cut a whole bunch of feathers out of brightly colored copy paper.

 

To the tune of Are You Sleeping?

Turkey feathers, turkey feathers

Brightly colored, brightly colored.

Who has a red one?

Who has a red one?

Add it now.  Add it now.

 

 

I repeat the rhyme with yellow, green, blue and purple so

eventually my turkey can look like this:

 

 

The thing that you will want to keep in mind with this rhyme is time management.  If you let 30 kids come up to the flannelboard, it could take 10 minutes to get the kids up and back, the feathers cleaned off, and time to sing the verses.  You will also have the stragglers who will stand the whole time at the flannelboard just petting it.  Many times when this happens, I tell them that they can play with the rhyme after story time, then I actually leave the turkey and the feathers out in the room for them to play with.  With 2 year olds, listening skills are very important as they are just learning when it is appropriate to sit or stand.  This is a good activity to reinforce those skills.

 

This week's round-up is hosted at Trails & Tales.