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.

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!
 

O frabjous day!

Flannel Friday has a new home today!

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.

 

 

Spring Second Grade Visits

It's time for the spring round of second grade class visits.  This time around I not only talked about using the library but about our upcoming summer reading program and activities.

After talking about the library, I read a humorous picture book and tell stories.  This spring I chose to read The Duckling Gets a Cookie!? by Mo Willems.  Surprisingly most of the children in this group were not familiar with the Pigeon books but that did not stop them from enjoying the story.  I had a grand time emoting as the Pigeon and then being a sweet little Duckling.  I then told the story, "Drakestail," using my duck prop.  (I substituted "Pot Luck" when I had to do the program at the last minute.)  That story was followed by a paper tearing story called "Lost, Left and All Gone" from Mudluscious: Stories and Activities Featuring Food for Preschool Children by Jan Irving and Robin Currie. 

Because I talk about summer programs, I do not tell as many stories as I do for the fall class visits.  The challenge is to keep the children interested while talking about the programs.  I use our magnet board for visuals and to play a memory game using clip art from the summer reading program manual (for more information see my posts for April 13 and April 20).  When I do tell stories, I make an effort to vary the types of stories I tell.  This helps to hold the children's interest because they don't know what kind of story I will do next.  Over the years I have gathered a collection of paper cutting stories, draw and tell stories, flannel/magnet board stories, stick puppet stories and prop stories.  I am constantly adding to it.

I change the stories every year.  Even though the children only come once, the teachers come every year.  Early in my career as a children's librarian, my next door neighbor, who owned a preschool, mentioned how boring her school's annual visit to the local public library was for her because the children's librarian did the same program year after year.  To her the librarian came across as uninspired and unwilling to try something new.  From then on I have kept notes of what I did for each class visit and varied my programs each year.  Teachers are not going to make an effort to bring their students to the library or invite the local librarian to visit their classes if they don't have a positive experience as well as the children.  I've been invited to additional classes after visiting one class because of teacher recommendations.  So although the primary focus is the children, it is also a good idea to keep the adults in mind as well when planning class visits.  After all we want both adults and children to enjoy the library and what it has to offer.

(Life has been crazy this week so I don't have a Flannel Friday contribution.  However, this week's Flannel Friday Round-Up is being hosted by Kay Leigh on her blog Storytime ABC's.)

Flannel Friday Follow-Up

Last week I posted about how I use the magnet board to promote summer reading to classes that visit in the spring.  One of my colleagues, Gina, made this year's set of pieces for the memory game for me and she did such a nice job that I wanted to share it with you. 

She not only used fancy scissors to cut the colorful paper but laminated the pieces as well.  Since I only work part-time, Gina has been a tremendous help to me. 

The group I had today enjoyed playing the memory game.  They remembered all but one.  I also put up the pieces about upcoming programs that I posted about last week.  They cheered when they found out we are having a DJ for our kick-off party.  I will post the program that I am doing for this spring's class visits soon.

Cate of Storytiming is hosting this week's Flannel Friday round-up.

A Way to Promote Library Programs

I don't just use our magnet board for storytelling.  Every spring I use it to promote our summer reading program to visiting school groups.  During April and May second grade students visit the library.  I play a memory game with them using the board and figures from the Collaborative Summer Library Program manual.  Usually I focus on the reading program and just mention the other programs and activities that take place in the library during the summer.  This year I have decided to talk about these other programs a bit more.  I made visuals to go with the various programs and will be placing them up on the board as I briefly describe what is scheduled.  I made the visuals using Microsoft Publisher and then glued them onto construction paper. 

I deliberately avoided straight lines when I cut out the pieces.  This keeps the pieces from looking crooked since there are no straight lines - quick and easy.

With magnets on the back, the pieces are ready to promote our summer programs.  When the class visits are finished, we can remove the magnets and glue to pieces onto poster board for a more permanent display next to our handouts for summer programs.

So don't just use your flannel/magnet board just for rhymes and storytelling.  Use it to tell your library's "story" as well. 

This week's Flannel Friday Round-Up is hosted by Library Quine of Loons and Quines at Librarytime.  Complete information about Flannel Friday can be found at So Tomorrow's Flannel Friday page.

How Ishikawa Became a Kite Maker

This prop story takes a bit of effort to prepare but the end result was well worth it.  It was the hit of my March Family Story Time program. 

Although the story may seem long, the narrative flows quickly.  I greatly simplified the original story, The Dragon Kite by Nancy Luenn, by eliminating all but the main characters.  I also changed the "villain" to the Shogun rather than his son.  The story has enough action and suspense to keep the audience interested.  My version can be found as a Google document here.

The two most important props are the dragon kite and the dragon it becomes.  I made stand-up figures for Ishikawa and Katsuta, but they are optional.  I looked at pictures of Chinese and Japanese dragon kites and chose the traditional style made out of circles for my kite.  This is also the style used in the book's illustrations.  I cut out several circles from yellow card stock with the circles getting smaller toward the tail.  I simply colored the edges with red marker.  On one of the largest circles I drew a dragon face with marker and used red and orange paper for the rest.  My original plan was to string the circles together like a kite but once I did that, it was difficult to keep the circles from twisting when I held the kite up.  I removed the yarn and just glued the circles together.  I did add yarn for the harness. 

Dragon Kite

I then made the dragon out several pieces of yellow textured card stock.  I used the first piece for the head and drew a body across the others.  I cut out the body pieces and taped them together.  I also made claws for the dragon and glued them on the body.  I drew a dragon face and cut out the other features from red textured paper.  The flames were cut from foil paper.  I also added scales cut from foil paper.  I used my imagination to make the dragon though I did use the same colors as the kite for I wanted the children to get the connection that the dragon was once the kite.

Dragon

The important thing to remember when creating these props is that the dragon should be much larger than the kite.  My dragon is around 42 inches and the kite is around 18 inches.

I made figures for Ishikawa and Katsuta using clip art from Microsoft Publisher.  I glued them onto heavier paper and made stands for them.  I just put them on the large table behind me when I told the story.  They seemed a bit lost sitting on the table with my other storytelling materials.  The next time I tell the story, I will set them on my Amazon theater stage (overturned amazon.com box). 

Ishikawa and Katsuta

I used paperclips as hooks and put them in Ishikawa's and Katsuta's heads.  That way I could hook Ishikawa to the kite harness when he goes up to the palace roof. 

I punched holes in the dragon's claws and hung Ishikawa and Katsuta from them when the dragon carried them off. 

I had the dragon face-down on a table behind me. When I lifted him up, several of the children oohed and ahhed. It wasn't my artwork as much as his large size that made the impression.

I really enjoyed telling this story and my audience seemed to enjoy listening to it.  It really did not take long to make the props.  I am looking forward to telling this story to visiting elementary school groups.

This week's Flannel Friday is hosted by Erin of Falling Flannelboards.  For complete Flannel Friday information see the So Tomorrow Flannel Friday page.