Teddy Bear Pattern Flannelboard

A couple of years ago I found these great looking teddy bear cutouts at the dollar store.  They came in three colors: yellow, red, and blue.  I thought I could use them at storytime.  My first thought was to have the children color on them.  This did not work out.  The bears had some strange coating that did not allow crayons or pen ink to stay.  Then one day, while I was working on a teddy bear themed storytime, I thought to use them for a flannelboard.

I slapped magnets on the backside of the cutouts.  Then I used these colorful bears on my magnet board to create color patterns during storytime.  I made patterns such as

Red, Red, Yellow, Blue, Red, Red, Yellow, Blue, etc.

or

Yellow, Red, Blue, Yellow, Yellow, Red, Blue, Yellow, etc.

Of course, I kept the patterns pretty basic. I only had a finite number of bears to use while repeating the pattern.

These bears make a great addition to my flannelboard repertoire.  They worked out beautifully to introduce the math concept of patterns to my toddler storytime crowd.