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:As 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:This 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:M 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 Little Red Hen (perfect for autumn / harvest time!):

 

• The Nativity: This 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:This 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! :)

Stamping Game for Counting and Pre-reading Skills

Have you seen the oh-so-cute pencil-top stampers in the dollar spot at Target lately?!?  We love stamps so I grabbed some of the monster kind.  We call them “sillies” here, because M is not at all comfortable with the idea of monsters.  ;)

I made a quick and simple game with these to go on our activity shelves.  All you need is a couple of stamps (or you could use buttons or some other manipulative as markers), a number die (we made ours from this template), and a simple grid with 20 spaces.

{I created a grid game a while back to go with a Bible story lesson, and the large grid for that game can be printed from here.  I also made a smaller grid – 2 to a page – and that can be printed from here, then cut.  You could simply draw some on some scratch paper also.}

To play, take turns rolling the die, then stamping that number of squares on your grid.  The first to fill their grid is the winner.  Fill your grid going from left to right, and top to bottom.  This helps develop the habit needed for eventual reading. 

M is having a lot of fun playing this – it’s such a simple way to make counting fun and he has no idea he’s learning pre-reading skills too.

This morning while I was lying in bed being lazy, I heard M begging Daddy to play this game with him.  So cute!  And, again, a quick lesson for me that the things which are simple and quick for me to put together are always more popular with him than the things I spend hours on.  Kids! :)

Here’s a shot of the used grids from yesterday afternoon.  I’m not kidding – M loves this game!
Have a beautiful day! :)

P.S. Happy Birthday, Honey!!  I love you! (my hubs :) )