More Flannelboards at Playtime

Interacting with flannelboards helps build early literacy while also supporting math concepts.  Telling a story with felt pieces builds vocabulary and may also mimic the left-to-right process we use for reading in English.  They can be used to teach counting, sequencing, sorting, and shape recognition.

I love watching a caregiver and child tell a story together using the felt pieces. 

I usually bring out two flannelboard sets at each playtime.  Some of the popular sets include:

-          Five little penguins

-          Mouse Loves Cheese

-          Great Enormous Turnip

-          Five Little Umbrellas

-          Number set 0-10

Flannelboards at Playtime

Flannelboards are an interactive and hands-on tool for reinforcing narrative storytelling skills, for practicing fine motor control, as well as for teaching concepts such as sequencing and counting.

I love watching a caregiver and child tell a story together using the felt pieces. 

I usually bring out two flannelboard sets at each playtime.  Some of the popular sets include:

-          Five Little Penguins

-          Counting Pets

-          Color Butterflies

-          Five Enormous Dinosaurs

-          Dino Colors

Flannel Friday: Hickety, Pickety, My Black Hen

I created this counting flannelboard set to go with a nursery rhyme I found for a chicken theme:

Hickety, Pickety, my black hen,
She lays eggs for gentlemen.
Gentlemen come every day,
To see what my black hen doth lay.
Sometimes nine and sometimes ten,
Hickety, Pickety, my black hen.

This set is made from clipart with magnets glued to the backside.  The children and I count how many eggs the hen laid that day.  This hen is a little sneaky!  She actually has 12 eggs that can go out.

Parent Tip: Nursery rhymes expose children to many words that are not used in everyday conversation. They expand a child's vocabulary. Children will also hear lots rhyming words. Research shows that children who know rhymes find it easier to learn to read.

Flannel Friday: Counting Berries in a Canoe

I created this counting set to go with the book Jamberry by Bruce Degan.  Simply count the number of berries in the canoe. The canoe is made from clipart and the berries are craft foam circles. I glued magnets to the back of each piece so I can use it on my magnet board.

After I made this set I realized it doesn't necessarily need to be a canoe.  I could say it is a plate or a bowl with berries or even balls piling up in it.

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.