Friday, May 25, 2012

Kip's Flowers

Even though May is almost over, I decided to do stories about flowers for my family story time next week.  I have yet to come across a folktale about flowers that I like and would also be suitable for making into a board story.  (If you have one, please leave a comment.  I'm always looking for good stories.)  So I decided to write my own somewhat original story.  I have used elements from other stories to make my own - a poor farmer, a king, a princess, a magical bird and a good deed rewarded.  The result is called Kip's Flowers and can be found as a Google document here.

I  based the king, princess and farmer figures on images from the Open Clip Art Library.  All the other figures are also from the Open Clip Art Library.  I glitterfied the bird and the growing flower (glitter glue, metallic markers and metallic paper).  I made the leaves and stem for the flower from basic shapes in Microsoft Publisher. 

King, Princess & Kip


Magical Bird & Garden Flowers


Magical Flower with stem pieces to make it "grow"

This week's Flannel Friday Round-Up is hosted by Melissa of Mel's Desk.  For complete information go to the Flannel Friday site.

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Books, Books and More Books

Earlier this week I splurged and ordered everything on my Amazon "Shopping List."  It was a perfect storm of a book ordering opportunity for I received two Amazon gift cards for Mother's Day and I had credit card points as well.  Some of the titles on my list had been there for a couple of years so I figured now was the time to do something about it before everything becomes digital.  (I confess I own a Kindle and I did spend 99 cents of my splurge money on a mystery novel but that was just one of 20 titles.)  Needless to say, I had fun.

I ordered -
12 knitting books (I have far more knitting books than items that I have actually knit.)
4 children's books for my personal storytelling collection
1 Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons for our family collection
1 book to give to my husband for Father's Day (See, I wasn't just thinking of myself.)
1 The Repurposed Library: 33 Craft Projects That Give Old Books New Life
1 digital book

The books for my storytelling collection are titles that were recommended on various youth services librarian's blogs.  Most of the blogs I added to my Google Reader after coming across them in Flannel Friday Round-Ups so Flannel Friday folk contributed to my book buying binge.  I purchased Stop Kissing Me, There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed Some Bugs, I'm the Scariest Thing in the Castle and Are You a Cow?

I find "book art" quite interesting.  I've been collecting examples on my Pinterest page "Paper."  I'm hoping that I will find something in The Repurposed Library that I can actually do.  It may get me inspired to go back to weeding my library's juvenile reference collection.  (I'd much rather be planning a storytime.)

Of course I have no idea where I'm going to put all of these books but I'll worry about that next week.

#

Flannel Friday Round-Up for May 18

This week's round-up features a wide range of creative ideas. 

Library Quine of Loons and Quines @ Librarytime brings a Scottish flair to the ever popular "Little Mouse" game with "There's a moose loose aboot this hoose!"  She provides background information about making it relevant to her "wee ones."

Anne of So Tomorrow and one of our "Founding Flannelers" gives some terrific advice about becoming a Flannel Friday participant with "So You Want to Flannel Your Fridays?"  I hope this post makes its way onto the Flannel Friday website.

Lisa of Libraryland gives us a flannel version of "The Deep Blue Sea" by Audrey Wood.  She also suggests how to use it in story time programs.

Sandy of Storytime Sparks shows us some lovely kites (Patterned felt! Glitter felt! Ribbons!) created by her colleague Sue in her post "Kites."  She also tells us how they were used in a toddler program listing two kite rhymes and the book used.

Please welcome Kelly of Welcome to Storytime who has created fantastic felt figures for Boo Hoo Bird by Jeremy Tankard for her first Flannel Friday post, "Boo Hoo Bird Flannel Story."  She calls herself a newbie inspired by Flannel Friday but her figures definitely don't look like those of a newbie.

Molly of What Happens in Storytime brings us a favorite nursery rhyme "Hickory Dickery Dock" but with a twist.  She sends a most unexpected (but cute) animal up the clock.

Katie of ¡Es divertido hablar dos idiomas! offers her first Flannel Friday contribution with a "Bilingual Storytime Idea - Flannel Friday."  It's a Spanish version of "Aiken Drum" inspired by last week's post by Miss Mary Liberry.  Welcome Katie!

Lucy of In the Children's Room tells us in her post "Book! Book! Book!" how to use flannel pieces to complement the popular book by Deborah Bruss.  She also cleverly reuses her flannel pieces.

Katie of Storytime Katie shows us another set of adorable finger puppets that she made from a purchased kit. They are "Jungle Puppets" and she will be using them for an upcoming zoo storytime.

Nicole of Narrating Tales of Preschool Storytime in her post, "Baby Bumblebee (Song by Dr. Jean)," created felt animals to go along with the song. (My favorite is the purple cat.)

Seth of The Voices Inside My Headphones gives us "Five Little Ducks Cleaning the House." He manages to pack a lot of action into his rhyme.

Kay Leigh of Storytime ABC's has a terrific storytime prop which is a "Big Red Barn." Even though she has been using this prop for years, it has never lost its child appeal.

Amy of Catch the Possibilities is also posting for the first time.  She gives us a rhyme with flannel pieces called "What Will We See in Outer Space?"  Welcome Amy and thank you for the nice words about Flannel Friday.

Sarah of Read It Again! adds a twist to a popular story with "Dog's Colorful Day (with a dinosaur)."  She made a cute green dinosaur with colorful spots.

Mary of Miss Mary Liberry presents us with a challenge with the tongue twister "Yellow Butter, Purple Jelly, Red Jam, and Brown Bread."  Again she incorporates literacy skills into an activity that is fun.

Jane of Piper Loves the Library takes creating felt pieces to another level with "Reading Birds in Flannel!"  I would love to see a photo of the cast in costume.

Courtney of Miss Courtney Meets Bobo explains how she uses felt pieces in her "Mother Goose on the Loose" program.  Humpty Dumpty takes plenty of falls each week.

Tracey of 1234 More Storytimes describes how she did a storytime about the concept "Round."  It may be a simple concept but she gets the children involved and sneaks in some literacy skills as well.

My contribution this week is "The Bat: Cut and Tell."  I plan to use it for my "Nocturnal Animals" family story time this summer.

Information about Flannel Friday including the schedule of future round-ups and links to the previous ones can be found at the Flannel Friday website.

The Bat: Cut and Tell

Following the owl draw and tell story, I have come up with a bat cut and tell rhyme for this summer's family story time featuring nocturnal animals.  Although I made up a rhyme, I might also just state the facts about bats.  It shall be interesting to see how quickly the children guess because, as I cut it out, I'm actually turning it upside down.

I am a creature of the night,  (Cut from 1 to 2)
Waiting until dark before I take flight.  (Cut from 2 to 3)
I eat mostly bugs but also fruit (Cut from 3 to 4) or the nectar 
     of flowers just like the bees (Cut from 4 to 5)
I live in caves but also burrows, flowers or leaves. 
     (Cut from 5 to 6)

What am I?

Below is a photo of the pattern along with the cutting sequence.  I have also scanned the pattern and put it up as a Google document here.  I simply traced the outline of a bat from clip art.  If you make your own template, always put it on the fold.  You are only tracing half of the bat.

Pattern

Normally I just place a piece of copy paper over the pattern and trace over the black lines.  Since I am using construction paper and textured paper this time, I had to make a template.


Template

Since I am just doing this for a single program, I purchased some craft paper to cut.  (This was suggested in the comments for this post.  Thanks Kristine.)  If I were to do this several times, I would just use black, gray or brown construction paper.  I also added some sticker eyes.  If you do, make sure to place them carefully.  It's a bit tricky placing them correctly on the inside of the folded paper because the cutting lines are on the outside.  Another much easier way to add eyes is to punch a hole in the folded paper.  The hole can be made beforehand. 

Pattern has been traced onto black construction paper.
(I used white paint so it would show in the photo.)

The back of the textured paper was white so it was easy to trace the pattern.


Below are photos of the cut out bats showing the fancy and plain versions.

Plain


Fancy

I am hosting this week's Flannel Friday Round-Up here.  Complete Flannel Friday information can be found here.


Friday, May 11, 2012

The Night Walk

I am now gathering ideas for my summer family story time programs.  I plan to have programs that will fit in with the "Dream Big - Read!" theme.  One program will be a pajama story time, one will be about the moon and stars, and one will be about night animals and stories of the night.

One of the types of stories I like to tell are draw and tell stories.  I wanted a story that took place at night and ended up being an owl on a branch so I wrote "The Night Walk."  It is not difficult to guess what the storyteller is drawing so it should appeal to both older and younger children. 

The story is about a brother and sister who go for a walk in the woods at night with their father.  As the story is told the owl on a tree branch is drawn:


The picture is fairly simple to draw.  It is important to remember that the goal is just to create a recognizable owl not a work of art. There are 14 steps to create the drawing.



I practice several times on small pieces of paper until I am comfortable with the story and familiar with the drawing sequence.  (Even though I wrote the story, I still found myself wanting to draw the branch before the moon.)  Below is a photo of some of those practice papers.  The owl looks different in each drawing but it still looks like an owl.

 
I enjoyed writing this draw-and-tell story because I started with the drawing and then came up with the story to go with it.  The only things I added to the original drawing were the leaf and the moon.  It was fun to work backward and make up the story to create the picture.

The story along with the drawing sequence and a photo of the numbered drawing is available as a Google document here.

Draw-and-tell stories are not as hard as they look.  It just takes a little practice to get comfortable with what you are doing.  Just remember the drawing sequence and tell the story in your own words.  Your audience will be most impressed when you draw them a story so don't be afraid to give it a try.

This week's Flannel Friday Round-Up is hosted by Sharon of Rain Makes Applesause.  Be sure to visit the new Flannel Friday blog for complete information about everything Flannel Friday.

Monday, May 7, 2012

Start Spreading the News....

The Flannel Friday hosts have been asked to publish the following announcement on their blogs to get the word out to as many interested people as possible:

Exciting news for Flannel Friday!

Introducing the Flannel Friday website!

As you know, Anne at So Tomorrow has been an amazing manager and archiver of Flannel Friday information for the past year. Anne and her husband are expecting their first baby in June (congratulations Anne!) so we wanted to give her a break from Flannel Friday during her maternity leave. So this spring, Anne and Mel from Mel's Desk and a small group of old and new Flannel Friday-ers worked to create a new web home for Flannel Friday.

Here's the link! http://flannelfridaystorytime.blogspot.com/

The new site will be the home of the Round Up Schedule, the archives, FAQs about Flannel Friday, information about how to get involved with Flannel Friday, and links to help new members get started with social networking and blogging. There will also be a link to the week's Round Up, but the Round Up will continue to be hosted on individual blogs. We'll just point to each Round Up from the site.

Refining the Round Up Procedure

The Flannel Friday community has grown continuously over the year, with new bloggers, new Round Up Hosts, and new members every week on Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. We are building an amazing community and are grateful to each and every one of you for your participation and enthusiasm. As the group has grown, you've probably noticed that so have the Round Ups! We've seen an inevitable increase in missed links and general confusion as the Round Ups are compiled. We thought that the launch of the new site was a great opportunity to take a page from other round ups in the blogosphere and establish one single method for building the Round Up each week.

This information will be in the FAQs on the new site, but here's our new strategy in a nutshell:

Every week the Round Up Host will publish a "placeholder" post for the Round Up on the host blog at 10pm EST on Thursday.

Each blogger who wants to participate in the Round Up will make a comment to the Round Up post with the link back to their Flannel Friday post by 10pm EST on Friday.

This will be the only place to post links for the Round Up! This way the Host won't have to worry about checking Facebook or Twitter as well.

If a blogger can't make the 10pm EST deadline on Friday, we'll ask that the post be held for the next week's Round Up.

The Round Up Host will gather links from the Round Up post comments throughout the day, and publish the Round Up at the end of the day.

We hope this will make the Round Ups easier to create and easier to contribute to! We'll look forward to your feedback over the next few weeks. Sharon / @ReadingChick at Rain Makes Applesauce has the Round Up this week, 5/11, so she's going to try out the new procedure with us and see how it goes!

If you have questions or comments, don't hesitate to share them via the new Flannel Friday email: flannelboardfriday [at] gmail.com.

Thanks for all you do to to make Flannel Friday more than a blog event--but a great community too. Here's to the next great year of Flannel Friday!
 
Dancing Penguins by Moini - Three happy penguins with coloured bow ties dancing the syrtaki
O frabjous day!
Flannel Friday has a new home today!

Thursday, May 3, 2012

Pretty Flowers

I recently purchased some felt flower stickers for my puppet glove.  Since I needed a rhyme to go with them, I came up with this:

Five Pretty Flowers

One pretty flower popped up to feel the sun,
It called for another to come and join the fun.
Two pretty flowers enjoying the warm day,
When up popped another wanting to play.
Three pretty flowers growing by the door,
Then out popped another so now there are four.
Four pretty flowers attracting bees from a hive,
When out popped another,
And that makes five!
1,2,3,4,5!

(I couldn't resist the sparkly flowers.)
 
This week's Flannel Friday Round-Up is hosted by Mollie of What Happens in Storytime.