Flannel Friday: Hardworking Puppies

Since introducing story times in the spring, the flannel stories that we do have quickly become one of the favorite parts of story time for both me and the kids.  I also recently took over toddler story times (in addition to the preschool and baby story times I was already doing), so I’ve been able to see firsthand what works and doesn’t with each group.  But, with both groups, having a flannel board story has been a great addition!

For summer reading, I wanted to theme each of my story times to a different type of hero.  While I had planned to use some of our existing flannel board stories that were purchased for the library, I found that we just didn’t have what I was looking for when planning many of my themes.  So, it was time to once again get to creating my own flannel stories.

One of my favorites that was created for this summer was this Hardworking Puppies flannel story.  It’s based on the book Hardworking Puppies by Lynn Reiser.  We have a copy in our professional resources, so I’m always guaranteed the book for reference if needed.  But, one of my favorite things about it is that it can told without the book with no problems.

What You Need

First up was creating our 10 puppies.  While the book has several different types of puppies, like Dalmatians and poodles, I decided to have one puppy template for ease of creation.  I found this adorable pattern from Opening the World of Learning on Pinterest.  Instead of having a collar, I put the puppies together into a single piece, then added googly eyes, noses, and tongues for each.

And here is a group shot with all of our puppies:

After creating the puppies, I need something to represent the different careers that the puppies have.  Using Clipart images, I created a visual for each puppy.  For example, a jester hat for the puppy who joins the circus, and a fire hat for the puppy who goes to the fire department.  The final pieces look like this:

The Story

To do this story, I put up the puppies on the board and gave one of the career pieces to each child.  I told about the type of person who needed a puppy to help, and the person with that piece got to select their puppy to help them by putting their piece on top of the puppy.  Periodically throughout the story, we stopped to count the number of puppies who were left who still needed jobs.  This actually worked really well with both the toddlers and the preschoolers, who were excited to pick out a puppy to do a job.  We also enjoyed counting the puppies to make sure that everyone got a job.  I also noticed that the parents encouraged the children to guess what type of job their puppy would get based on their symbol, and even guess what other types of jobs puppies might do.  I can’t wait to use this one again!

Tips for Use

One of the things that I really enjoyed about this flannel was that I didn’t feel like I had to tell the story from the book verbatim.  I used the story as a guideline, of course, but modified based on what was working for the audience.  This is a great flannel for encouraging conversation and introducing new vocabulary.

Can’t Get Enough?

Many thanks to our host is Lisa at Libraryland for collecting this week’s Flannel Friday posts.  For more information, visit the Flannel Friday website here.  I can’t wait to see and share more ideas!

Flannel Friday: Dress the Cowboy

Recently, I realized that I needed to do something different with my story times.  We had songs and action rhymes and, of course, books, but I still felt like something was missing.  So, I decided to try my hand at flannel stories.  My library has a very extensive collection of flannel boards (that I am currently in the process of organizing and inventorying to see what we have), but after seeing some of the great designs out there (and featured with Flannel Friday), I wanted to try my hand at making some of my own.

True confession:  I actually enlist the help of a great volunteer who does a lot of the creation for me.  I supply templates, ideas, and materials, and she actually does the creation.  

Currently, I plan for all three story times (baby, toddler, and preschool) at my library, but I only present for the babies and preschoolers.  This summer, though, I will be taking on the toddlers as well.  So far, I haven’t added any flannel stories to my baby story times, but I have included them for the toddlers and the preschool groups.  My current story time setup includes an easel that is a felt board on one side, which I’ve found is actually great for sharing the flannel stories with the group.  Putting the stories on the easel frees me up to move the pieces and interact with the kids without holding a board, and it also makes it easier for everyone in the group to see.  I’ve been doing flannel stories for a couple of weeks now, and they seem to be pretty popular with my groups.

March is Texas History Month, and my library director wanted us to offer a Texas-themed story time as part of the month-long focus on Texas in our library.  Planning a story time on Texas was actually much harder than I thought it would be.  I managed to come up with a theme and craft, but I still wanted something more interactive.  With the theme in mind, I set out to find a flannel story.

What You Need

I came across a great Dress the Cowboy rhyme from this Go Texan Day outline.  The poem is recommended as a flannel story, so I wanted to create a cowboy that we could actually dress.  Let me tell you, finding a cowboy template is harder than you would think!  I finally found this adorable outline from Made by Joel that I was able to work with.  I printed several copies of the cowboy so that we could make modifications to the body as needed.  I created a cowboy body template, and then created separate pieces for our clothing.

The Story

Our cowboy starts out with no clothes.  I told the kids that I needed some help to get him dressed correctly, and asked for volunteers to help me dress the cowboy.  In Wednesday’s group, I had more kids than I had pieces, but I was able to partner up siblings to help each other with no complaints.  Thursday’s group had less kids who wanted to participate, so everyone who wanted to got a piece to put on the cowboy.  One of our other librarians recommended that I do the rhyme twice if I had a larger group in the future, which I will definitely do if it happens again to give everyone the chance to participate.

Once we put our cowboy up on the board, I recited the rhyme and paused after each article of clothing to find the child who had it and give him or her the chance to bring it up to the board to dress the cowboy.  We clapped and cheered for everyone who brought up their pieces and put them on the cowboy.  Here’s an idea of how it looks in progress:

A cowboy dresses himself with care.  He starts with long, red underwear.

Out in the desert, you don’t want to get hurt, so the cowboy wears a strong wool shirt.

Deserts and prairies are the cowboy’s scenes.  To protect his legs, he wears sturdy blue jeans.

The cowboy bent, and ran, and knelt.  To keep his pants up, he wore a leather belt.

The coyote howls, the old owl hoots.  On his feet, he wears leather boots.

It isn’t yellow, so it’s not a banana.  Around his neck, he wears a soft bandanna.

At this point, I stopped and asked the kids if our cowboy was complete.  I wasn’t sure whether they would need prompting to remember his hat, but both groups responded immediately with a resounding, “NO!  He doesn’t have a hat!”  So, I asked if anyone had a hat for our cowboy and we finished the rhyme.

A cowboy is a cowboy, and that is that!  On top of his head, he wore a ten-gallon hat.  He’s all dressed now from head to feet, and now our cowboy can’t be beat!

Tips for Use

I ad-libbed the poem in a few places to make it work with our groups and so I didn’t have to constantly refer to my notes.  Overall, the kids really enjoyed helping dress the cowboy.  We left him up for the rest of story time (and he made a great transition into our last book), and after story time, several of the kids came back through for another look at the cowboy.  I also had parents both days taking video of the kids dressing the cowboy.  While I was a little surprised (and nervous), I think it means that our cowboy was a hit!

Hopefully this will be the first of many flannel successes that I get to share.  While I do plan on utilizing the great flannel stories that we have purchased for the library, I also want to keep creating new stories of my own.

Can’t Get Enough?

Many thanks to Kathryn at Fun with Friends at Storytime for being the Flannel Friday host this week.  Flannel Friday has been an amazing resource for me as a children’s librarian, and I hope it helps you, too!  For more information, visit the Flannel Friday website here.  Thanks to all the other children’s librarians who have been sharing their great ideas!