Flannel Friday-Pete the Cat

I have had a giant piece of blue felt sitting on my desk for the longest time. This week I decided that it would make the perfect Pete the Cat.  If you haven't seen this series, I highly recommend it.

This is Pete the Cat.  I made him standing up because I would like to use the same felt cat for all of his stories.  He is all felt with puffy painted details.

Pete the Cat's first book is Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes.

Here is Pete the Cat with his white shoes.  The shoes are all made out of an AccuCut shoe die.  As Pete the Cat is walking along, he steps in a large pile of strawberries, which turn his shoes red.

Next, Pete the Cat steps in a large pile of blueberries, which turn his shoes blue.

Then Pete the Cat steps in a large puddle of mud, which turns his shoes brown.

Finally, he steps in a bucket of water and washes off the brown, the blue, and the red.  His shoes are white again, but wet.

In his second book, Pete the Cat goes to school in Pete the Cat: Rocking in My School Shoes.  This is a good book to use with lower elementary kids or at a back to school story time.  While it hasn't happened yet, I need to make Pete the Cat a backpack, a guitar, a cool pair of high tops, a book, a milk carton, and a swing.

Pete the Cat's third book is coming out in May 2012 and is called Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons.  I was fortunate enough to hear the book read by Eric Litwin at a conference this spring and came up with flannel parts for the story.

In this installment, Pete the Cat loses the buttons off of his shirt one by one.  

Eric Litwin, the author of the Pete the Cat series, uses a lot of music and rhymes in his text, which make them perfect for sharing with kids.  I would also recommend checking out his cds (under Mr. Eric or The Learning Groove).

Pete the Cat Play to Learn

I am amazed at how Pete the Cat has taken off.  I know why I think he's cool (he promotes colors, counting, & other early childhood concepts), but I never expected the circulation explosion that has happened.  That being said, this month's Play to Learn program is about Pete the Cat.  

If you haven't checked out one of my Play to Learn programs before, they are station-based activities that promote early literacy based on a children's book.  While I set them up, each activity is for the caregiver and the child to work on together.  What makes it different than a normal craft program is that each station promotes a specific skill.  We also add signage showing what to do and why we are doing it.  I started them in Fall 2011 and they have now expanded across our library system as one of our early literacy initiatives.  It's kind of cool.

Station 1: Nametags
I had precut shoe shapes in 5 different colors (red, blue, yellow, green, and white) with our AccuCut machine.   The kids could pick out their shapes, write their name on them, and attach them to their shirts with tape.  To assist the kids in writing their names, I typed out all of their first names on a piece of paper and ran a couple of copies to put at this station.  This way they could also recognize their name from the list and try to duplicate the letters if they aren't quite ready to spell their name on their own.

As librarians, we know that learning to read and learning to write go together.  At this station, the children are learning to recognize letters and how they are formed.  They are also strengthening their hand muscles as they write (kind of like exercise) so they can eventually write smaller letters and longer sentences.

Station 2: Pete the Cat's Colors
I took the basic idea of colored shoes from Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes to make this coloring book.  We had all of the pages printed and preassembled.  The kids just had to color and write their names.

We have two big skills we are working on at this station.  The first is comprehension.  As you can see on the page above, I wrote the word "strawberries" in red.  This is to give the child a clue that the shoe should be colored red.  With comprehension, we are teaching children that words and letters have meaning.  Colors are a great example to use with comprehension, because they can see the color and know what the word means.  The other skill is coloring (or the writing skill).  Coloring is exercise for little hands, which helps to make them strong enough to write their letters.

Station 3: Making Pete the Cat Out of Shapes
You have to love Pinterest when you can find all kinds of great ideas to fit with almost any theme!  This idea came from a picture that I saw on Pinterest.  I just had to create a pattern and tie it back to early literacy.  In addition to the gluing component, which strengthens hands just like crayons, we asked kids what color shoes Pete is wearing.  Each child had a sticker to add to their picture, then were encouraged to write the color name next to it.  As an added bonus, we worked on shape recognition (not an early literacy skill, but an important early childhood skill).

Station 4: Color Matching with Pete's Shoes
This idea came from a Flannel Friday post by LibrErin.  I really liked that you have the color shoe and have to match it to something that is that color.

I used Microsoft clip art to create all of the images except the shoes.  Those I had to draw because I couldn't find a good shoe picture.  Feel free to steal it.

This station also promotes the comprehension skill.

Station 5:  What Sounds Like Cat?
To create this station I drew a large blue cat, kind of like Pete.  Then I made cards using clip art.  Some were -at words and some were other words.  The goal is to add the cards that rhyme with cat to the giant blue cat.

As you can see, mat sounds like cat so it is added to the cat.  Chair does not so it is put off to the side.

This station works on the decoding skill.  This means that words are made up of sounds.  Here we are looking for words with the -at sound.

Station 6: Button Sorting Station
I had originally seen this post about button sorting based on Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons.  Unfortunately, I couldn't find any buttons that weren't an obvious choking hazard so I needed a plan B.  We purchased two activities from Lakeshore Learning which work well here.  The one that the kids liked the best was a button sorting station.  The set includes a large number of laminated mats and large buttons.  8 kids can easily work from this set at one time.  The second item we purchased was a shape sorting tray that also included buttons.  The shape sorting tray had a sensory aspect to it that in addition to large plastic buttons, there was bumpy foam shapes, and shiny metallic shapes.       

How does button sorting promote early literacy?  With our button sorting station, the mats each had a characteristic printed across the top, such as triangles or purple.  The goal of the station is to add buttons with that characteristic to the mat.  This reinforces the comprehension skill.  The child is seeing the word and learning that it has meaning.  Then they are using that meaning as they work at the station.  A secondary skill here is the sorting skill that promotes early childhood math.

Station 7: Reading the Books and Playing with the Flannelboard
We pulled out all of our copies of all of the Pete the Cat books and put them out on our story time carpet for parents and children to read together.  Then I pulled out a large Pete the Cat flannelboard and 2 pizza box flannelboards that I had made for kids to play with as they retell the story.

This station works on 2 skills-reading and talking.  Reading is important because it promotes a love of reading while teaching kids new vocabulary.  A love of reading is one of the most important factors in teaching children to read-if they want to do it, they will be excited to learn.  The flannelboards promote talking.  As children pull out the parts, they are telling the story (even if it isn't the same as in the book).  

As an added bonus, my new Pete the Cat puppet came last week.  He fit right into this station.  My favorite part about him is that the kids weren't using him as an actual puppet.  He tended to play a lot of Ring Around the Rosie today (who knew?).

How it went?
Honestly, this was my favorite Play to Learn program that I have put together (and not just because it was about Pete the Cat).  There was a great balance between crafts and activities and the room wasn't overcrowded.  I got a lot of complements from the parents about how much they love this type of program.  Complements like that are fun, because they make you excited to keep doing this.  The kids liked it too, although when I asked one boy what his favorite activity was, he told me "red".  Well, at least we were covering colors today too.

Pete the Cat Party

Pete the Cat is one of my favorite book characters and I was really excited to host a Pete the Cat party at my library!  This was an event where everyone who registered showed up (which NEVER happens).

We started off by reading Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes and Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons by Eric Litwin.  I chose these two stories as the crafts and activities all centered around these books.

After the stories, I opened up our 4 stations.  Everybody got to do everything, but it helps congestion to spread the kids out.  At our first station, we made these awesome Pete the Cat headbands.

At our second station, we made Pete the Cat out of shapes.

At our third station, we added numbered button stickers to our yellow shirts.

Our fourth station was a Button Sorting Center.

We also have a Pete the Cat standee that we use for a lot of our school outreach visits.  I brought him into the room and a lot of the parents were taking pictures of their kids with Pete.

The whole program lasted about 45 minutes.  Everybody had a great time!

Flannel Friday Round-Up

It's Friday, which means it is time for some great Flannel Friday ideas!

Just in time for Halloween, Anne at So Tomorrow brings us Five Little Pumpkins.

If you are looking for an adorable monster to use with your flannelboards, check out Dorothy's Polka Dotty Monster.  Dorothy has asked for help with a poem or rhyme to go with it, so get your creative juices flowing and help her out!

Do you need another Halloween flannelboard?  The Perfect Pumpkin at Miss Courtney Meets Bobo is a great interactive story.

How do you explain the concept of scary to small children?  Kay at Storytime ABC's gives us a great way to do so with a poem and a giggling ghost.

If you have missed the ongoing discussion lately on the Flannelboard Friday Facebook page, you will definitely want to check out Sarah's It Started with a Sneeze to see her full sneezing story time.

Mis Mary Liberry shows us how to create a robot out of shapes, while pulling out a whole bunch of early childhood skills like print awareness, sorting, and learning vocabulary.  This would also make a great craft!

It always makes me excited to see Pete the Cat as the first flannelboard on a page.  (I am a HUGE Pete the Cat fan!)  Busy Crafting Mommy shows us her Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons, her rendition of Dog in Boots, and a flannelized version of How Do I Put It On?  Altogether, you have a great clothing story time! 

Pete the Cat also appears at 1234 More Storytimes as we look for his missing buttons in the flannelboard game Button Button, Who's Got the Button.

Notes from the Story Room shows us how to create reversible stick puppets for a retelling of "The Fox and the Crab Have a Race".  It is part of her upcoming family story time on "tails", which I think is a really interesting theme.

The Library Lady reminds us all that imagination is a powerful tool and that we as educators can show the parents ways to do this.  She gives us the actions for "On Halloween Night" to use with our groups.

How many of us can actually say that we have a flannelboard that will work with the letter X?  Storytime Kate gives us X-Rays!  Yes, they really look like x-rays, but would work great for a letter X story time, a doctor story time, or one about parts of the body.

Amanda brings us 2 bird story times at Trails & Tales.  The first is about water birds (and I love the craft idea).  The second is about raptors. 

Mother Goose goes pink at Piper Loves the Library.  She gives us a really interesting idea to support breast cancer awareness month in story time.

My Tigers are in the World Series so I had to find something with a baseball in it.  You can play the Ball Guessing Game at Libraryland. 

Enjoy!  If you haven't been here before, make sure you stop by the Flannel Friday Pinterest page or our Flannel Friday blog for more information.  Next week Trails and Tails will be hosting our Thanksgiving Extravaganza.  Start pulling together your turkey flannelboards now!

Storytime Swap

For our first ever Storytime Swap, I decided to make Pete the Cat with a twist.  We have a family literacy program coming up in March and I was looking for ways to make flannelboards more accessible.  I saw somewhere online where a teacher created pizza box flannelboards and my Pete the Cat idea was born.

I started off with a 10x10 pizza box.  You can try asking your local pizza places for empty boxes or you can buy them in bulk at Gordon Food Service.  I now have 47 empty pizza boxes waiting for a fun idea.  I cut a piece of felt to fit the top of the box and used Tacky spray glue to attach it.  Next time I would probably use a darker color as the flannel background.

 

Next, I took a pattern that I created in April and shrunk it down to fit the 10 inch pizza box.  (If you would like your own pattern, please send me a message.)

 

 

Here is Pete the Cat.

 

 



Oops, he stepped in strawberries and now has red shoes. 

(If you read the story, he also has white, brown, and blue shoes.)

 

 

Here is Pete with his four groovy buttons.

 

 

Pete's ready for a little baseball coming in his new book         

Pete the Cat: Play Ball (February 2013).

 

All of these cool costumes are stored in plastic baggies inside the pizza box.  I am running a little behind on getting this to the post office, so my swap partner will get this sometime next week.

Flannel Friday-Pete's Back

We have a great relationship going this summer with our local Parks & Rec department (yay Julie for organizing!) and are doing a lot of neat outreach events out in the community this summer.  Next week we will be doing story time in the park.  There is a good possibility of there being 150+ people there, which means that we began to rethink how we will be sharing picture books with a large crowd.  We are pulling out puppets, props, and our newly painted Pete the Cat prop boards.

This is Pete the Cat painted on a large foam board with acrylic paints.  The buttons all have velcro so we can tell the story of Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons by Eric Litwin and have the buttons pop off.  Of course,  you need a way to see his belly button so we made a 2nd board.

While we will still be using the book to tell the story, these boards will help illustrate the actions to the crowd.

Kelly at Ms. Kelly at the Library is hosting this week's Flannel Friday round-up.

If you want to know more about Flannel Friday:

• Check out the official Flannel Friday blog that includes schedules and other important information.
• Search for images and links on our Pinterest page.
• Discuss story time stuff (and other ys stuff) on the Flannel Friday Facebook page.
• Follow #flannelstorytime on Twitter.

   

Early Lit Kits, Round 5

Let me start this post off by saying that I have an awesome boss.  Last summer I thought that I was done putting together our early literacy kits as we ran out of grant money and they take time and money to put together.  After our first four rounds of kits (here, here, here, and here), we had 24 kits on 15 themes and we could not keep them on the shelf.  In December my boss asked if I would like $1250 to create more kits that we received through a donation.  The glitch was that they had to get done by the beginning of March, which meant that this was my major January/February project.  I also work with an awesome PR person who takes all of my knowledge and turns it into the fancy booklets that you will see attached.  During the first week of March, we released an 15 additional kits on 4 new themes and we are still going strong in terms of circulation.  Our funder wanted to see the kits in action so we ran our story times one day around parts from each of the new kits.  Not one new kit was left in stock after story time as parents took them all home!

Kit 16-I Went Walking (Animals)
This kit contains:

• I Went Walking by Sue Williams
• What Do You Do with a Tail Like This? by Steve Jenkins and Robin Page
• Wee Sing Animals, Animals, Animals book and CD by Pamela Conn Beall
• I Went Walking puppet and props
• Booklet

Kit 17-Colors with Pete the Cat

This kit contains:

• Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes by Eric Litwin
• Mix It Up! by Herve Tullet
• Pete the Cat Storytelling Kit
• Storytelling Lapboard
• Color Viewers
• Booklet

Kit 18-Cookie's Week (Days of the Week)

This kit contains: 

• Cookie's Week by Cindy Ward
• Today is Monday by Eric Carle
• Folkmanis cat puppet
• Storytelling Lapboard
• Cookie's Week flannelboard
• Booklet

Kit 19-Lunch (Food)

This kit contains:

• Lunch by Denise Fleming 
• Eating the Alphabet by Lois Ehlert
• Storytelling Lapboard
• Lunch flannelboard
• Melissa and Doug Picture Bingo
• Counting Cookies by Learning Resources 
• Booklet

 

 

Early Literacy Kits, Round 3

If you have missed the first two posts for this project, you will want to start here and here.  I am slowly getting the rest of the project up on the blog in between summer reading chaos-there will be at least one more post on this topic.

Kit 7-Jump, Frog, Jump
This kit contains:

• Jump, Frog, Jump by Robert Kalan
• Red-Eyed Tree Frog by Joy Cowley (I love when I can add some nonfiction to the kits!)
• Frog puppet
• Five Green and Speckled Frogs playset
• Booklet

Kit 8-Go Away, Big Green Monster!
This kit contains:

• Go Away, Big Green Monster! by Ed Emberley
• Knees and Toes
• Kids in Motion CD by Greg & Steve
• Cloth puppet and 8 Velcro storytelling pieces
• Booklet 

Kit 9-Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons
This kit contains:

• Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons by Eric Litwin
• 123 by Simon Basher
• 123s and ABCs CD by Ella Jenkins
• Pete the Cat puppet
• Numbers Fun-to-Know Puzzle
• Busy Bug Count and Match Dominoes 
• Booklet

 

While the picture shows the My First Number Pairs game, we decided against it at the end due to the cost of the kit.

Kit 10-Big Red Barn
This kit contains:

• Big Red Barn by Margaret Wise Brown
• Everywhere a Moo, Moo
• Animal Favorites CD
• Blue flannelboard
• Funny Farm flannelboard set
• Moms and Babies Fun-to-Know Puzzle
• Booklet 

I still can't keep these kits in on the shelves.  As soon as they hit the shelf, they go back out again.  This makes me want to create more than my original plan, but we'll see.  I

Sick Days

They happen at least once a year and unfortunately you can't schedule them.  Mine tend to come the first week of summer reading or right in the middle of a story time session (you know, those times when you can't take off).  What do you do when you get sick?  How can you run a program with no voice?  Here are a couple of tricks and tips to minimize the damage.

1.  Have a back-up plan.  Do you have a story time plan written out in case you can't be in the building (the flu does hit all of us and never on convenient days)?  Here are two samples of what I have put together for my Music and Movement story time and my 2 Year Old Story Time.  My boss and my colleague both know where these are located and can pull them out.  They both know where all of my materials are located.  While neither of them want to do my story times, they can in a pinch.

2.  Have a secondary back-up plan.  I know that this sounds funny, but some days, you can't afford the extra staff to run a program if you are already out sick.  In this case, I have a staff member pull out a disc of my Lisa's Dance Party songs, put it in the cd player, and just push the play button at the beginning of story time.  While this isn't my favorite thing to do, I like it better than cancelling a program.  After all, parents put forth a lot of effort to make it to the library.  We want to give them the best experience possible on a given day.

3.   When you run 28 weeks of story time a year, chances are good that you will lose your voice at some time.  This happens to me at least 4 times a year.  When this happens to me, here's what helps me to put together a program:

• First, explain to the parents what is going on.  Really, it is obvious (after all, if you have no voice, you really can't talk).  You will find that they are really supportive in these instances and will take some of the burden of the program off of you.  After all, they are happy that the program is still going on.  These are the instances where I really feel appreciated.  The parents will sing louder and participate more to keep the program going.
• If you have no voice, you really can't read a story.  First, I raid our JKIT area which cd and book kits.  Are there any that will work for your group?  Second, I raid You Tube.  With a laptop (or iPad) and a microphone set up, you can let someone else tell the story while you flip the pages.  We used this method this week with Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes and Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons.  I let Eric Litwin tell the story while I turned the pages.  There are also a lot of really good apps out now that will actually tell the story (check out the Sandra Boynton ones for sure).  These are great to use in this type of situation.
• This is also a good day to pull out a flannelboard or two.  Do you have any that have a lot of pieces (so everybody can take a turn)?  How about ones with matching pieces?  These are the ones to pull out-many of these will tell themselves with very little words.  The kids are still having a great experience and you don't have to talk.  Plus, with 30 or so kids each putting a piece up on the flannelboard, this will take up about 10 minutes of your program.

These are just a couple of ideas that help me to put on story times when I am sick.  What do you do?  The biggest thing that I have found to be helpful is to think outside of the box.  This isn't the type of program that I want to do every day.  After all, talking is an important early literacy skill.  How can you put on a program that is audience-driven?

School Visits Rock!

This past week a colleague and I had the opportunity to take part in a Literacy Night at one of our local elementary schools.  Whoever came up with the idea really did a good job and I would love it if other schools did something similar.  It was run similar to a school carnival night with stations that ran for 10 minutes.  Other stations included a couple of games, the school book fair, and the cafeteria with cotton candy and drinks.  The library had one station all to ourselves.  In addition, kids were given a passport that needed to be initialed at each station.  If they participated in at least three activities, they could enter their passport into a drawing for various gift baskets.

With 10 minutes of time, what can you do?  We did this as a team so one person wasn't running around like crazy.  One of us set up a table with library card applications, bookmarks, crayons, various handouts (databases, what the library offers, etc.)  The other one of us sat in a chair and read books.  Thanks to the awesome people at Flannel Friday, I had a really good collection of books to read aloud.

Awesome School Read-Aloud Booklist

• Miss Nelson is Missing! by Harry Allard
• The Princess and the Pig by Jonathan Emmett
• Bark, George by Jules Feiffer
• Perfect Square by Michael Hall
• The End by David LaRochelle
• Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons by Eric Litwin (it's just not cool if you don't bring Pete the Cat)
• Creepy Carrots by Aaron Reynolds
• Skippyjon Jones by Judy Schachner (only good if you add in a Mexican accent!)
• Knucklehead by Jon Scieszka (read a chapter at a time)
• The True Story of the Three Little Pigs! by Jon Scieszka
• A Bad Case of Stripes by David Shannon
• Duck on a Bike by David Shannon
• I'm A Shark by Bob Shea
• Falling for Rapunzel by Leah Wilcox

The highlights of the night were definitely Bark, George and I'm a Shark.  As I finished up one book, I would let a kid pick the next book to read.


What I would change:
If we do this again, we need something cool to get people in the door.  Yes, they have stations to visit, but it seemed like people got "lost" in the halls or would stop in really quick.  While we know that the library is cool, not everybody does.  I am thinking that a costumed character or our summer reading prize wheel would have been good hooks to get people in the door. 

The other interesting thing is that we got great crowds when someone was reading.  Even the big kids would cluster in and sit in the back.  The problem is that when the announcement came to switch rooms, everyone left and we would have an empty room.  It is hard reading to an empty room, even if you know that is what will draw people in.  We almost needed to plant a kid in there to sit for the whole night while read.

Flannel Friday-Pete's Big Lunch

If you follow my blog, you will know that Pete the Cat is one of my favorite book characters.  It is like Christmas for me when a new Pete the Cat book comes out.  This week we tried out Pete's Big Lunch, one of the new I Can Read books by HarperCollins.  What I like about it, other than the silliness, is that you are building something.  This translates really well over to a flannelboard.  Plus, in the case of Mrs. Lisa lost her voice this week, the kids were able to tell the story as we stacked the pieces up.

If you have missed this book, Pete is making a sandwich.  He just uses some unlikely ingredients.  As you can see, Pete uses a whole loaf of bread, a fish, a tomato, mayo, an apple, crackers (by this time the kids are giggling), a pickle, swiss cheese, an egg, 2 hot dogs, a banana, a can of beans, and three scoops of ice cream (by now you have lots of laughter).

All of the pieces for this flannelboard are cut out of felt with puffy painted details.

This week's Flannel Friday Round-Up is hosted by Storytime Katie.  For all things Flannel Friday, check out the official blog.  Also, make sure you stop by the Flannel Friday Pinterest page for an excellent flannelboard resource.  

Next week's round-up will be hosted here at Libraryland.  If you will be going out of town for the holiday weekend (in the U.S.), the placeholder will be up by Wednesday (a little early this week).

Color Zoo Play to Learn

This week's Play to Learn program was another collaborative (credit will be given below).  Color Zoo by Lois Ehlert is one of those early childhood classic books that every child should read.  Between the shapes and colors, there is a lot of good stuff here.  The hard part comes when you are brainstorming ideas to go along with the book.  Below is what we came up with.

Station 1-Make Nametags
Instead of staff making nametags, we have the children and/or their parents make them for this program.  We put out a fun shape, some yarn or tape, and child pencils.  In addition, I write out all of the children's names so they can trace them from a list.  A colleague (Deb) had a sheet of nametags with the cute borders and shapes so I only had to copy, cut, and punch them out.

Station 2-Read the Book
I pulled out all of the copies of Color Zoo that I could find for this station.  To add some additional fun, I pulled out 3 pizza box flannelboards.  Each box contained 1/3 of the story (otherwise, there were just too many parts in one box).  

The kids liked to make the animals in the book out of felt shapes.  Then, they began to experiment and make their own creatures.  This was good for their imagination.

To give a little more shape practice, I also pulled out my large flannelboard and my copy of Baa, Baa, Shape Sheep from Making Learning Fun.

Station 3-Make Shape Puppets
I found this idea on Pinterest and thought it would work perfectly.  I cut out a wide variety of shapes with our AccuCut dies.  I scattered them across the table, along with glue sticks and crayons, although I did try to put one large shape at everyone's place to get them started.  To make the popsicle stick easily stick to the shapes, we used a glue dot on the end. (This I could prepare ahead of time, leaving the backing on one side of the glue dot and attaching it to the stick.)  I will admit, I am not super creative when it comes to things like puppets (as seen below), but the kids came up with some great things.  I had one who folded a triangle in half to make a beak.  Another decided that their puppet needed a body and kept building.

Station 4-Button Sorting Station
I love when you can reuse a great station!  This one we had purchased from Lakeshore Learning for our Pete the Cat Play to Learn program.  The buttons have a wide variety of shapes and colors that you can sort on various labelled mats.

How does button sorting promote early literacy?  With our button sorting station, the mats each had a characteristic printed across the top, such as triangles or purple.  The goal of the station is to add buttons with that characteristic to the mat.  This reinforces the comprehension skill.  The child is seeing the word and learning that it has meaning.  Then they are using that meaning as they work at the station.  A secondary skill here is the sorting skill that promotes early childhood math.

Station 5-Shapes
This was, by far, the most popular station.  We purchased the Color & Shapes Activity Mats through Lakeshore Learning as we expect this set to get heavy traffic.  You could also make some using colored paper and laminating them.  Set-up was easy as I just scattered them across the floor.  On our sign, I gave a list of directions to get them started, such as "Jump on the red star."  They had no problems once they got going.  In fact, most of them took their puppets (from station 3) and would hold them as they jumped to the different shapes.  In addition to the gross motor skills that they kids were working on, they did a lot of talking as they played on the shapes.  We found green squares, orange stars, etc.  Colors and shapes are a great way to practice talking with kids as they can see "red" at the same time you are talking about red. 

While it wasn't expected, the kids also worked on the early childhood skill of sorting as they liked to move the shapes around by shape or color.  Luckily the shapes are a little heavy so they weren't dragged all around the room.

 
Station 6-Make a Book
I love to include a book activity in all of our Play to Learn programs.  Since our focus is early literacy, the children can work on their book in the program, then take it home and read it with their family.  This book was created by Deb again.  I like it because there is a lot of shape tracing.  The shapes are all labelled so kids can see the words that match the shapes.  Some of the pages had a picture made out of shapes, such as a sailboat, and the kids counted the triangles.

Picture Book Month Display

This month's fun display is celebrating Picture Book Month.  For me, this is a GREAT department display.  Why?

• Picture Book Month promotes materials for half of our age group.  Plus, they have promo materials right on their web site!
• There are enough books to support a display so staff don't have to totally change the theme more often that every 2 weeks-1 month.
• As we all purchase picture books in our department, we are all experts and should be able to refill the display as books are used.

Ta-da!

How to make your own Picture Book Month display:

• Pull out your favorite picture books, those that you feel should be represented, or those that have gotten lost in your department and are on the brink of being weeded.
• Find some space.  Above is an awesome display space for my department.  It is at the end of a shelving unit and is on the main traffic path for the department.  Most everybody walks by this display.
• Print off a sign or promo materials from the Picture Book Month web site.  Signage should look nice.  If you put it in a plexi stand, make sure the plexi is not cracked or broken.  If you don't have a plexi stand, try laminating the sign.
• Arrange your books.  It really is a skill to make a display look good.  Size and color matter!  I start by putting my tallest books in the middle of each shelf and building around them.  Similar colors should be near each other.  For example, you can see on the Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes has a lot of yellow.  To tie in with Pete the Cat, the lettering in A Pocket for Corduroy is also yellow and there are yellow details on the George and Martha book.   
• Enjoy watching people use your display.  Remember that it is not annoying to refill the display multiple times a day.  In a good display, the books will disappear.  

Storytime Swap

Thanks to Storytime ABC's, it is time for another Storytime Swap!  Kay put all of our names in a hat and matched us up to a partner who we will trade "treasures" with just in time for summer.  I gave my partner, Amanda, a list of possible choices and she chose:

Yep, Pete the Cat is back again!  He seems to appear here a lot since he is my favorite children's character.  You may remember him from here, here, or here.  Since I have done Pete the Cat before, I figured I should add to him so you have something new to look at.  Amanda had asked if I could cut some extra felt shoes since we have a die cut machine and this got me thinking.  

Pete now has numbers to match his 4 groovy buttons.  Now we can work on early math skills by counting the buttons and matching the amount to the number.  You can use all 5 numbers on the board or do something like this:

Amanda had asked for additional colored shoes for Pete so her kids could match them up.   Here's what I came up with:

If you don't want to use your feltboard, you can pull out your clothesline and do something like this:

Finally, since you have the shoes and you have the numbers, you can do some additional counting like this:

This week's Flannel Friday round-up is hosted by Lucy at In the Children's Room.