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.



Flannel Friday-Baseball Fever

With the Detroit Tigers in the World Series, I have baseball fever.  Unfortunately, there are not a lot of good baseball flannelboards out there (something to fix in the future!).  I found the best of what I have that has a baseball in it.  This flannelboard game came from Storytime Magic by Kathy MacMillan and Christine Kirker.  What is really nice about this book is that the rhymes are in the book and the book directs you to patterns housed on ALA's web site.  I like patterns.  :)

 

 

Due to copyright rules, I will just give you one line of the guessing game.  The rest can be seen in the book (or you can email me).

 

I'm small and white.  After a hard hit I fly through the air!  What sport do you play with me?

 

I am hosting this week's round-up!  Check it out at Libraryland.  

Play to Learn-Nursery Rhymes

This month's program followed the theme of nursery rhymes.  I really like using nursery rhymes with young children because of their songlike quality.  When you use songs, you slow down the language, which helps young children to hear word parts and understand what you are saying.

Station 1: Making Nametags
I had precut 5 shapes with our AccuCut machine (kitten, cow, lamb, teddy bear, and pig).  The shapes were the closest animals that I could find to represent various nursery rhymes.  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: Which is Your Favorite?
I took the 5 shapes from above and wrote out the nursery rhyme that goes with them on each shape.  Then I stuck them to the wall above a piece of blank paper.  As kids come to this station, we asked them to read the rhyme and choose their favorite.  When the chose, we asked them to write their name on the paper by the shape.

This station was easy to put together, but it was very important because it put a lot of our ECRR2 skills together.  First, the parents are reading the rhymes, which promotes a love of reading.  Because of the songlike nature of the rhymes, the language is slowed down so children can hear all of the parts of the words.  As they choose which rhyme is their favorite, they are using letter knowledge to write their name.  As an added bonus, we are using early math skills by looking at the papers and seeing which rhymes the kids like the most (graphing skill).

Station 3: Make a Book
I used the Hey Diddle, Diddle mini-book that is in Literacy Centers and Activities for Nursery Rhymes, Volume 1.  The kids colored the pages and stapled the book together.

By completing this book, the kids were working on their comprehension skill.  This means that they are learning that words have meaning.  The illustrations match the simple text so you can see that there is a cow jumping over the moon right next to the words "cow jumped over the moon".  Coloring is also an exercise which develops strength in the kids' fingers, which helps them get strong enough to write.

Station 4: Baa Baa Color Sheep
We started off by providing a sheep pattern run off on cardstock.  This made it sturdier when the kids carried their creations away from the station.  We had colored tissue paper grass left over from a previous collage craft event that we used as the wool.  A little bit of grass will go a long way with this craft.  The kids glued their "wool" onto their sheep, then wrote the name of the color in the blank space.

If you use the grass, you will want a vacuum cleaner on hand to help clean up when the program is over.  If you would like to make this craft less messy, try using colored paper shapes, such as circles or squares.  While I preferred using the grass because of its sensory quality, not everybody can handle the mess that comes with it.

By using a glue stick to glue the "wool" on the sheep, the kids are working on their fine motor skills.  This also is exercise to help their hands get ready to write.  As the kids write the color name in the blank, they are learning that words have meaning (the wool should match the color name).

Station 5: Little Miss Muffet Magnet Rhyme
This station came out of  October/November 2008 issue of The Mailbox.  Little Miss Muffet was written out with the "t" dropped from the word tuffet.  We put magnetic letters on the board and had the kids add those letters to the rhyme and sound out the new word.  It helps if you pull out only consonants, such as b, p, or s.

At this station, the kids learned that letters have sounds and that those sounds are parts of words.  By playing with the word "tuffet", the kids were able to play with those sounds while having fun.

Station 6: Read the Story
We put this station in the same area as Stations 7 and 8 as a lot of the activities go together.  First, I gathered up a lot of our nursery rhyme books in a variety of formats.

Then we made many of the folder stories in Literacy Centers and Activities for Nursery Rhymes, Volumes 1 and 2.  The kids had a lot of fun with these because many have flaps or movable parts.

 

 

The kids practiced reading at this station, which encourages them to learn how to read on their own.  By sharing reading with their children, parents were helping them to develop vocabulary and comprehension, nurturing a love of reading, and motivating their children to want to learn to read.

 

Station 7: Baa Baa Shape Sheep

This flannelboard activity came from Making Learning Fun. (Note-if you aren't familiar with this site and work with children, bookmark it!)  We put out the flannel sheep and the rhyme and the kids had a great time playing.  Not only would they recite the rhyme, they would sort all of the sheep (another math skill!).

 

 



Station 8: Stick Puppet Theater
I created a bunch of the stick puppets from Literacy Centers and Activities for Nursery Rhymes, Volumes 1 and 2.  Then I created a puppet theater for the kids as seen here.  What was fun as that a lot of the times the parents would sit on one side and the kids would sit on the other.  Then they would each put on a show for the other side.


I do have to say that this Play to Learn took a lot of work to put together.  Our library system is starting to put together kits so we can trade throughout the branches.  This became the first one.

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!