Flannel Friday: Farmer Brown Shears His Sheep

I am so excited to share my Flannel Friday with you all this week!  Mainly because it is ADORABLE.  I based my flannel board on the book Farmer Brown Shears His Sheep By: Teri Sloat.  Now, I will apologize now if you don’t already have this book in your collection, good luck getting it, it seems to be out of print grrrrr.  It’s a book I forgot I used to use in storytime when I first started working in the children’s department.  It’s about a farmer who shears all his sheep and takes their wool.  The sheep are very concerned and upset so they follow Farmer Brown to see what he is doing with their wool.  They are constantly complaining that they are cold and they want their wool back.  Farmer Brown travels to get the wool cleaned, combed, spun, dyed and it’s then he realizes the sheep are freezing!  So he takes them back to his farm and makes each of them a…CARDIGAN!  It’s a really cute rhyming story.  I figured this would be a great story to adapt to a flannel board.  Sorry I don’t have a template, I actually drew my sheep all by myself!  I can’t draw at all, so I was very proud   So here it is…

Wooly Sheep!

Naked Sheep!

Cardigan Sheep!

Flannel Friday: Five Little Sea Creatures

Five Little Sea Creatures

 

5 little sea creatures on the ocean floor, the lobster walked away and now there are 4.

4 little sea creatures living in the sea, the octopus crept away and now there are 3.

3 little sea creatures wondering what to do, goodbye said the starfish and now there are 2.

2 little sea creatures not having much fun, off swam the seahorse and now there is 1.

1 little hermit crab, sad and all alone, he went home and then there were none.

Duck Storytime

This week we did a duck theme in storytime!  There are so many great books out there about ducks and the kids always seem to love them.  I’ve been waiting and waiting to use the book Stuck By Oliver Jeffers along with the magnetic board I made.  I made the book fit the theme this week because a duck gets stuck in the tree (I know, I know, it’s a stretch).  Well, this week probably wasn’t the best week to use this.  Storytime was insane!  Lately I’ve been having a lot of younger siblings come with the appropriate aged kids (3-5yrs) and it just makes it tough because I want them to feel included too.  And they want to do everything their older sibling does.  Which is to be expected!  So needless to say the room gets a bit…noisy.  And none of the kids were really paying attention when it was their turn to put a piece on the magnet board.  BUT they did seem to have fun, so I guess that’s all that matters!  Soooo, to be used again at another time with a smaller crowd.  Here is my handout!

Duck Storytime Handout

 

Here is the fun craft we did, the kids all LOVED it and giggled when I showed it to them.

Butterfly Storytime

Last week my storytime was supposed to be a butterfly themed one but it didn’t happen.  I had to cancel storytime because I didn’t have a babysitter for my wee little ones.  I guess that’s motherhood   Anyways, I figured I would still share what I was going to do since I already had it all prepared.

Butterfly Storytime Handout

Here is the craft we were going to do.  Coffee filter butterflies with a pipe cleaner, easy!

Activity/Song: Color Game By Jim Gill

The Color Game is a fun song that I love to use in storytime.  It is sung by the wonderful Jim Gill, who will be at my library in May   SO EXCITED!!! BTW, check out his new CD, it’s pretty sweet.  It’s a rhyming song where you take different colors and put them on different parts of your body.  I’ve found it’s best to use with older kids (3 and up) because it is a little fast paced and you really have to listen and pay attention.  But I’m sure the littler ones would enjoy it too!  What I like to do is hand out a little bunch of circles to each child that has a range of colors so they can use those to place on the different body parts.  We sit on the floor and spread the colors out around us so we can see each one.  “Take red, put it on your head.  Take yellow, put it on your elbow” and so on.  If you haven’t ever used the Color Game in ST, I urge you to try it!  Enjoy!

 

 

Color Storytime

This week we did a color theme, one of my favorites!  There are so many great books out there to fit this theme but I have some favorites I like to use.

Color Storytime

For our craft we did one to go along with the story, Dog’s Colorful Day.  I tell the families to try and remember how he got each spot.  It really gets them talking and interacting with each other.  I love it!  Here is one of my past posts about Dog and his colorful day.

 

 

Frog Storytime

This week our theme was frogs!  It was a blast and everyone loved all the jumping.  Here is my handout:

Frog Storytime Handout

We did a very simple craft.  I used the Ellison machine and cut out frogs and lily pads and had the kids glue them on some white paper.  We even made them pop up frogs!

Pig Storytime

This week I decided to do a pig theme!  This is my first storytime since I have been back from maternity leave and it went really well.  I even used a puppet at the beginning to introduce our theme and went around and let all the kids pet him.  They loved it so much!  Here is my pig storytime handout:

Pig Storytime

Here is the craft we did.  Seth came up with it a while ago and it’s just so darn cute!  It’s great too because most of the pieces are cut from the Ellison machine.

Bunny Storytime

I always like to do a bunny themed storytime around Easter but I never make the storytime itself about Easter, just cute little bunnies   Here is my Bunny Storytime handout!

Bunny Storytime

Here is the craft that goes along with it.  I chose this one because it had most of the pieces cut out from a long time ago.  The less prep time, the better!  It’s a bunny made from all different shapes.  Enjoy!

Flannel Friday: Stuck

For this week’s Flannel Friday I (with the help of Seth) made a version of the book Stuck by Oliver Jeffers.  It isn’t quite a flannel though, after talking with Seth a bit we decided it would be much easier to make into a magnetic board instead.  A flannel would be awesome, but would take so much time, there are tons of things that get stuck in the tree!  So with the help of Microsoft clip art, handy magnetic sheets, a laminator, and a glue gun, here is the finished product:

Check out his awesome blue Chucks!  That’s my favorite part

While making it I had an even better idea, what if the kids could be included in the story?  Before I begin reading I will pass out an item to each child and explain to them that they have to pay extra special attention and when the item is ready to be thrown into the tree they can come up and put it on the board themselves.  There are over 20 items so each child will definitely have one since my storytimes are limited to a certain number of kids.  The only other story I’ve been able to really include them in was Chicka Chicka Boom Boom and they absolutely LOVED coming up to put a letter on the tree.  I can’t count how many times a piece of felt has accidentally fallen to the ground and a sea of preschoolers come rushing to pick it up for me.  There’s something fascinating to them about it.

I can’t wait to see how it goes in a few weeks.  I will let you all know!