Our Flannel Board – part 1

 

M just LOVES our flannel board.  I’m sure you already know this, because I’ve said it on this blog about 20 times already. ;) 

The flannel board has become such a big part of our day lately - “school” time and just playtime too – that I want to share a few things about it – including how I made our board, the different ways I make the felt sets, which felt sets we have, and how we use them.

Since we have about 20 different felt sets, with lots of ideas for more, this is going to have to be a series of posts.  I hope it gives you some great ideas!

To make our flannel board, I used a large piece of foam core board from Michael’s (2’ x 3’, I think).  Some people choose to use a heavier material such as plywood, but I wanted ours to be lightweight and easy to transport since we move it around the house, or sometimes put it away.  M was very small when I first made our flannel board and I didn’t want him to get hit in the head with something heavy, should he pull it over on him (our board is not attached to the wall in any way, it just leans up against it).

I bought 1/2 yard of blue flannel and attached it to the foam core board.  To cover the board, simply pretend you are wrapping a present, then secure the fabric to the back of the board with glue or duct tape.  I used white duct tape and it has held up fine for over 2 years now.  It is not very *pretty* on the back, but we never see that side and easy means more to me than pretty does for something like this!

I also found an 8” x 10” piece of corrugated cardboard, and used some leftover flannel to make a smaller version that we take with us on car trips:

The first felt set I made for M was a group of simple shapes in different sizes.  He was less than 1 year old and had fun simply manipulating them, sticking them in his mouth (bleck!), and trying to make them stick to the flannel board.  We had them out all the time and made fun geometric designs with them: I repeated the names of the shapes for him, and sometimes the colors, over and over while he picked them up and did whatever he wanted with them.  He knew the names of all the shapes pictured within a few weeks.  Sometimes we used them to talk about soft versus hard.

The next set pictured is what I refer to as our “miscellaneous set” – it’s a little bit of everything.  I found many of the templates in Flannel Board Stories for Infants and Toddlers, by Ann Carlson, which I picked up at our local library.  Some of the printed pictures were found on various pages of the DLTK-kids.com site.

These were just for fun since M was still so little, and are things that M found interesting – a car, an airplane, a school bus, a semi-trailer, a little boy with clothes you can change, and a couple of puppies.

This is a good point to discuss the various ways of making felt sets.  Most of these were simply made by drawing or tracing with felt tip pens right onto the felt pieces, then cutting them out. You can use all colors of felt-tip markers, but make sure they are permanent markers, so the colors don’t bleed if they should happen to get wet.

To make the puppies and similar picture-pieces, I printed the pictures onto regular paper and cut them out.  I then put a thin layer of white glue on the entire back of the picture and placed them on a piece of felt.  A heavy book on top made sure they stayed flat as the glue dried; once it was completely dry, I cut it out along the edge of the picture.  This is one of my favorite methods – it’s just so easy to do, and the felt pieces hold up very well.

If you find pictures online that you would like to use, another great way to make them is to print them out, laminate them, and hot glue a piece of sandpaper to the back.  Sometimes the rough part of velcro works too, but I have had better luck with sandpaper; and the rougher the better.  This is easy to do and the pieces stay in great shape, but they are not quite as much fun for little fingers to play with as felt is.

{I sometimes copy a black and white picture into my computer’s “paint” program to color it before printing it out to use this way.  Of course, you could also color them with markers or crayons before laminating them.}

Fabric stabilizer sheets also work for use on the flannel board.  These color well with colored pencils or crayons – simply draw, color, and cut out the piece you want.  The stabilizer is rough enough to stick on the flannel board by itself.

In the next flannel board post I’ll share some of our other sets, and how I keep them organized, as well as the different things we do with them!

Have a beautiful day! :)

Tot School – Sept. 6, 2009

M is 36 months old.

Tot School is just becoming more and more fun (for both of us) as we go along. This week M kept saying “That was fun!”, “I’m having fun!”, and various similar exclamations at random times. I hope he meant it and wasn’t just trying to talk himself into it!

In winter we were in the routine of doing something with the sensory tub almost every day. I’d let him pick lentils, rice, noodles, or whatever each day and he’d basically play with his little cars or little people in it while I had a little Mama-quiet-time in the mornings. You know, time to pray, read, actually put two thoughts together in a row, or simply sit and stare at the wall. :)

For some reason I never tried hiding things in the tub for him. This post from Jolanthe made me change my mind. So I grabbed his letters from his See and Spell and hid them in some rice. There wasn’t enough rice, so I mixed the lentils and pasta in too. Who says the sensory tub should only have one sensory experience in it at a time?

This is how he started – looking for the letters:
But it quickly turned into this:
I guess old habits die hard. We did get a lot of rice and lentils and noodles on the floor, but it was vacuuming day anyway, so I wasn’t too worried. Plus, it’s always fun to give him the dustbuster and make him vacuum with it. The dustbuster could keep this kid occupied all day if the battery didn’t run out. :)
I made up some new activity bags over the weekend; I was really excited about them. First, sandpaper and yarn (I’ve seen this on a lot of blogs, but first read about it in The Toddler’s Busy Book, by Trish Kufner).
It was not a big hit at all; apparently it was very boring:
So, we did a little scissor practice. I’m still trying to figure out where I first found these pages to print. I need to print out some that are a little more difficult, because M did these perfectly this time! He just loves cutting!
Then we did this little book from the Mailbox (June issue, I believe). It is a book about a seed that gets planted, then sprouts, grows a stem, gets leaves, and finally flowers into a sunflower. On each page M had to pick the correct picture to glue on, depending on the stage of the plant. He did fine with this, but wasn’t really “into” it, and didn’t want to color it.
Next we played checkers. Rather, we tried to play checkers. I know, I know, this is way too advanced for him and I was way too impatient to keep explaining it to him. BUT he has been asking for a checkers game since he saw a picture of one in a magazine.
This is how far we got before we both gave up:
Another activity bag I made up for him was these foam shapes. I cut slits in them and you can fit them together to create… well a bunch of shapes that fit together. :)
He loved this activity, although it didn’t really turn out like I hoped it would. I think the slits should’ve been shorter.
Another activity bag I made him was this “Silly Critter” game from the most recent issue of our High-Five magazine. I put magnets on the back and we used a pan to match up heads, bodies, and legs to make “silly critters”. We both liked this one!

We used our animal flashcards from Target for a matching game with M’s little zoo animals:

He did his name puzzles with milk jug lids (always a favorite!):
This is our newest addition to the flannel board – 10 in the Bed (found here):
He LOVED it and did it several times that evening with Daddy. Again, I have to get a post done about how great the flannel board is and all the things we do with it. Soon, I hope!
We read this GREAT book – Clap Your Hands, by Lorinda Cauley . It has activities on every page that the child (and the mama) can act out. It is a huge hit!
Then, in keeping with the actions theme, we did these movement cards* from Sparklebox. I put them in our pocket chart and M turned each one over, then we did whatever it said. They are fantastic – there are ones for balance that you do standing in one place; some you do while “traveling”, like skipping; and some you do on the floor, like rolling like a pencil or somersaulting. (There were others, but they were a little advanced; I only printed the ones I knew would be fun for M.) I was hot by the time we finished and even a little bit sweaty I am embarrassed to say, hee hee. These will definitely give you your exercise for the day!
Here’s M at the end of his somersault (I did NOT do a somersault), I love the goofy expression on his face!
For more great Tot School ideas, go here.
Have a beautiful day! :)
*I got the idea to do movement cards like this in the pocket chart from somebody’s blog and I wish I could remember who!! If it was you, please let me know and I’ll add your link. I decided to use the movement cards from Sparklebox, but there were some others available too, and they were linked on the other blog, so I’d like to share them!!

Open Ended Art – Mosaics with Pebbles

To be fully truthful, I’ll let you know right away that I am totally cheating on this Open Ended Art project. :) For M’s birthday we had him make a stepping stone (from a kit – you can find them at Michael’s), and it sort of, kind of used pebbles. Glass pebbles, that is. :)
We’ve had this kit since he was 18 months old, and kept meaning to make it… and kept forgetting again. SO, we finally got it done on M’s 3rd birthday. He loved doing it and we highly recommend these for Christmas gifts for the grandparents! :)
I mixed the stone material and water together, then Daddy helped M make his handprints:

I put the letter tiles in where I wanted them, then M had fun placing the pieces of glass and glass pebbles wherever he wanted.

He really enjoyed this, we had to remind him a couple of times to be careful not to mess up the words or his handprints; all in all he did a great job!
Here’s the finished stone:

I can’t believe my baby is 3 years old!
For more mosaic ideas, head over to Teaching My Little Bookworm!
Have a beautiful day! :)

Craft Time – Rainbows Galore – #1

I wanted to do these crafts as part of our Noah’s Ark theme last week, but we simply ran out of time.  They are pretty fun to do though, and I like the results, so I’m sharing them here.
The first idea I got from Making Learning Fun.  I printed this template, then circled the color names in the appropriate marker color so M could do this on his own a little bit.  Then I put a muffin tin out with different flavors of Jello powder – cherry, orange, lemon, lime, blueberry, and grape. Sounds yummy, doesn’t it?

(Please pretend you can’t see my rusty old pan.)

M put glue on each stripe of the rainbow (he needed a little mama guidance with this, so no pics), then used a small spoon to *sprinkle* (dump) the powders on.

Here’s the finished rainbow, and it smelled delicious!

There are a couple of things you should know before you do this with your little one though…
1. The paper becomes very heavy with this on it, because it gels when it mixes with the glue.  We used cardstock thankfully, or it would’ve been a disaster.
2. It gels when it mixes with the glue.  So, you know, you have gluey Jello  which, while it smells pretty and looks pretty, is really kind of gross.
3. Ants may come calling when they realize there is gluey Jello nearby.  For this reason M’s artwork ended up in the garbage early the next morning, the evidence covered up with lots of paper towels.  Thankfully he has not asked about his pretty, smelly rainbow yet. :)
So, if we do this again… and it was truly a LOT of fun for M (kept him occupied for a good 45 minutes) we’ll use sugar free koolaid. 
Have a beautiful day! :)

Sunday School on Friday – Noah’s Ark

I have found that M seems to gain more from our Bible story times when we do activities and talk about the story a little bit before actually reading the story from one his children’s Bibles.

So, on Thursday I let him watch a short (3 minutes) video about Noah’s Ark on his Read And Share Toddler Bible DVD. He really enjoyed this.

There are so many inspiring ideas online for a Noah’s Ark theme. We almost weren’t able to fit everything in!

Friday morning when he woke up, this was waiting for him:

The printout is from Making Learning Fun (a fantastic site, by the way).

M got right to work:

Later we talked about all the colors of the rainbow as we did a little color mixing:

Next we had fun playing “Sink or Float?” in our kitchen sink:

M came up with some pretty interesting things to drop in. :) We made a little boat with a sponge, straw, and foam sail, and tried to see what we could carry on it and what would make it sink.

We talked about the ark and how God kept Noah, his family, and the animals safe on it.

I found these story cards on Sparklebox (another fantastic site!). M has never done sequencing with story cards before, and I wasn’t sure he was ready for that challenge, so I simply told him the story with the cards, and then we did it a second time while he told the story (with me giving some prompts).

I made up some game mats by printing this template out on colored construction paper, and we played an animal matching game. The game we used is one we’ve had for a while, but as we found matches, we got to put our animal couples on our arks. Whoever had the most animals on his/her ark won. :) Very simple, I know, and it was really unnecessary to print out ark game mats, but simple things can make a difference. M felt like it was a brand new game. And he won. ;)

We didn’t end up actually reading the story about Noah and the Ark from M’s Bible until bedtime that evening!

I had a craft planned, but we just didn’t get to it. However, I do still plan to do it with M, and I’ll create a separate post for it. I think it’s going to be a lot of fun!

Have a beautiful day! :)

Art time – Ice paints

Several weeks ago I made ice cubes in our freezer using water and some tempera paints. I planned to let M paint with them outside some hot summer day. And then I totally forgot about them. I found them a couple of days ago and brought them out for him. It ended up being one of the most fun activities we’ve done in quite a while.
I put some newsprint out on the patio, in case he wanted to paint with them. Well, first he experimented with them, watching them melt in the sun. Then he put some in his little wading pool and watched them float around. Luckily that water was pretty cold so they didn’t melt in there. He brought them back to the patio and moved them around on the paper for a while, and made this:
Then apparently inspiration struck, because he grabbed a paintbrush, dipped it into the puddles of icy paint and began painting…. himself. As in, his body. First it was simply feet, and he made this:
Then, well, he got a little carried away:
Ok, I got in on the action too. I wrote “I *heart* u” on his tummy, and made a funny face on his back. Heh. :) It wasn’t quite so much fun when he decided to paint me, but that’s neither here nor there.
He had a great time, I was surprised at how much time he spent with these simple ice cubes, and how much fun it turned into!
To make them, I just put a baby-spoonful of paint in each part of my ice cube tray, then I ran water from the faucet over them and popped them in the freezer. I may have stirred some of them up with a toothpick, but the paint pretty much settled to the bottom of the ice while they were freezing anyway.
I hope you do this with your little ones! It was so much fun. You will obviously need to be ok with messes (or have a stiff drink nearby), and a swimming pool or hose is a good idea too for clean up time! I actually brought a washcloth out and washed him (no soap) in the pool.
Enjoy! And have a beautiful day! :)