Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Our Flannel Board – part 3

Well, finally I am getting around to almost finishing up this little flannel board series!  {Part 4 will be the last part – a short one (I promise!) about games and making fun scenes for creative play time.}

Now that M is 3 years old, I’ve noticed he is much more responsive to stories told with the flannel board than he was at a younger age.  In fact, he loves it and will often re-tell a new story himself several times throughout the day and then again when Daddy comes home.  It is so much fun to see!

We don’t have a lot of felt story sets, but I have ideas for several.  Just have to find the time – you know how that goes! ;)

Here are the story sets we currently have (and links to the source, where appropriate):

  • Brown Bear, Brown Bear:blog pics 034As you can imagine, this one is popular!  We don’t own the book but we’ve checked it out from the library enough times to have it memorized.  M loves doing this one by himself – the rhythm of the story (more like a chant), is fun in and of itself!  Be sure to check out the link above – Making Learning Fun has a ton of great ideas for this story, not just the felt set!

 

  • The story of the first Thanksgiving:blog pics 017This set is really just a grouping of clip art from kizclub.  I used it last Thanksgiving to introduce M to some new words (it was so cute to hear him say “cornucopia”!), and this year I’ll use it to tell a simple story of the first Thanksgiving.

 

  • This set is all about feelings:blog pics 036M had a small board book (Sesame Street’s Monster Faces) about feelings and it was the best one I found that labeled feelings in a simple way.  There was absolutely no copyright information anywhere in the book, and since Sesame Street characters are pretty easy to obtain, I had no qualms about just photocopying the pages and attaching them to felt.  These came in very handy when M was in that whiny stage around 14 months or so and we were trying to give him the words to use to describe his emotions.  I’m including this one to give you some ideas for making your own felt sets!

 

 

  • The Nativity:blog pics 018blog pics 021 blog pics 028blog pics 030This is a fabulous set for telling the story of Christmas!  Last year M was not that enthralled with seeing the story on the flannel board, but he enjoyed playing with the figures!  This year I know we’ll get a lot of use out of this one, and I’m excited!

 

  • Another Bible story – Jesus and the Children:blog pics 044This is one I simply threw together to go with the Bible story… I used clip art I found online and some online coloring pages too.  I’m sorry I don’t have the links to any of them.  I’m including it because even though it’s not as nice-looking as some of the sets, it is one of M’s favorites.  He loves telling this story and he really does not care that the size of the disciples is totally out of proportion to Jesus, or any of the other minor details that bothered me about it when I made it.

This brings me to a related topic that I would like to mention… 

Flannel board stories are fabulous especially for telling Bible stories.  They help the story come alive for the child.  I’ve really seen this with M.  Whenever we have a felt set to go along with a Bible story (or any kind of visual aid like story sequencing cards) I’ve noticed he comprehends and just enjoys the story so much more!  He also goes back and reviews the story over and over again if the pieces are left out for him. 

I am very disappointed that there are not more free resources online for Bible story felt sets.  I’ve found a few, which I’ll link to at the end of this post, and if you know of any, I’d love to hear about them in the comments!

I am going to enlist my husband’s help for making future felt sets for Bible stories – he is not an artist, but he does have quite a bit of talent when it comes to drawing – and I hope to make them downloadable here for any of you that might want to use them too!  This will be a work in progress, but if there are any specific Bible stories you’d like to see, I’d love to know about it!  Please feel free to comment or email me!

LINKS TO RESOURCES I’VE COME ACROSS:

  • Sparklebox has several Bible story resources on this page.  These include some sets that can be used for storyboards or flannel boards, as well as some cards that are great for story sequencing
  • Making Friends has several paper doll-style printables here that could be adapted for flannel boards.  They also have some great Bible story craft ideas!
  • Browse through Christian Preschool Printables for a few great felt set and story aid ideas.
  • Danielle’s Place is not the easiest site to navigate, but if you have time, it’s well worth looking through – she has quite a few free printables that would work for felt sets.
  • Look through DLTK’s Bible section for crafts, coloring pages that can be made into felt sets, and other ideas.

Any others you know of?  Share them in the comments!

Have a beautiful day! :)

8 comments:

  1. I love your nativity set. I hope I get time to make one for Bear. She used to play with her felt board ALL the time, but hasn't for a while. I'll wait to see if she has renewed interest in it before making the set.

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  2. Nicole these are great! Quick question, i see youve added a copyright to your photos. Can i ask how you do that??

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  3. Hmmmm.... Maybe that's something to work on, making flannel board sets. Okay, this is actually kind of intriguing to me. I'll have to think some more.

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  4. Wow, you have so many sets. Anna loves her felt sets too... when she remembers them. I think this girl is getting to the point of having too many toys.

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  5. We have a flannel board here, I have the alphabet, been thinking that I need to make my own characters for it. Thanks for giving the inspiration!

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  6. You know, I made our flannel board and STILL have yet to use it!!!! Ugh!!!!!! I did find a site with some felt board Bible characters...just can't find it. I will have to keep looking!!!!

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  7. Thanks for the links to the Bible story sets! I found another one about a year ago, but now I can't find it again - I'll let you know if/when I do!

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  8. I really need to work on a flannel board, these are so wonderful. Thank you for sharing!!

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