Catch the Possibilities

Do you want to build a snowman? Wendy will show you how to create a versatile set that's great for stealth programming or toddler groups on her blog. 

If you are looking for a flannel to use in a religious context, Carissa has a great tutorial on her blog for creating an interactive quiet book page based on Isaiah 9 from the Bible.

Here are your four fabulous flannels for this Friday's roundup! (Also... alliteration for the win!)

Kathryn has some adorable Hide and Seek Babies, including a fun monster surprise! I love that she made these nice and big. I've tried to be very conscious of the size of the flannels I make for babies and toddlers since their eyes are still developing.

Jessica was also feeling some cute baby flannels this week with her "Brown Bear" inspired set.
I like that she's created a range of family members so that she can switch things up, and ending with a puppy is a fun twist like the teacher at the end of the source text. 

Jumping Jellybeans! In addition to being my new favorite exclamation, Mr. Keith has some adorable felt jellybeans that can be used with the fun rhyme he provides, or for sorting, counting... possibilities!

Kathryn at Fun with Friends always has top-notch flannelboard sets, but these sly foxes are magnificent. The detail, the creativity! 

Working on a letter O storytime? Wendy of Flannel Board Fun has three sets this week that would be great extensions. Two Little Hoot Owls, Old Mother Hubbard, and One, Two, Buckle My Shoe. I skip almost any set with people because they never turn out looking quite right, but I'm rethinking that after seeing how Wendy constructed her Mother Hubbard. 

Bookwings offers up a fun storytime plan for Frogs, and a cheery flannel version of 5 Green and Speckled Frogs.


As always, check the Flannel Friday website, Facebook, and Pinterest accounts for more information and past Flannel Friday creations. Are you on the Flannel Friday map? Add yourself via this survey.

Nancy Foss from Galion Public Library asked if I could post these fun extension activities for Put Me in the Zoo by Robert Lopshire. My preschoolers and toddlers would get such a kick out of putting spots on the dog-- and using contact paper instead of felt is a good option for helping the poms stay stuck. Plus then you'd have to draw the dog once. (If I had to draw that, once would be plenty for me!) Enjoy!

Great minds think alike-- we had multiple fish ideas this week!
Five Little Fish on Flannelboard Fun (my storytime kids would lose their minds when that clown fish came out!)
Bubble Bubble Pop! on Literacious (this set is so versatile!)
Five Rubber Ducks on One Little Librarian (okay, so these aren't fish, but how cute are these?)

Karlyn's Librarian Life has many ideas for a bedtime/pajama themed storytime, including this version of The Pajama Party! 

Three new animal themed ideas:
Five Little Monkeys Teasing Mr. Crocodile finger puppets from The Buckeye Librarian (my preschool kids would be on the floor laughing when they saw the mouth on that crocodile!)
Oh no! Someone Left the Barn Door Open at Fun with Friends at Storytime  (this would be fun for a peekaboo storytime with babies/tots, but you could also give clues and use it to work on prediction with older kids!)
Three Little Penguins Sliding on the Ice on Flannelboard Fun (this would be fun for a baby or toddler storytime-- my littles can't make it through five sometimes!)

Speaking of versatile sets...check out This is a Square on Flannelboard Fun. The possibilities are endless! :) 

Thanks to everyone who shared; see you next week at What Happens in Storytime... for a birthday extravaganza! 
 

As always, check the Flannel Friday website, Facebook, and Pinterest accounts for more information and past Flannel Friday creations. Are you on the Flannel Friday map? Add yourself via this survey.

If you're planning on posting or hosting for the Flannel Friday Guest Post Palooza to celebrate our fourth anniversary (I still can't believe it!), feel free to grab this image and use it to spread the love.

The bunting image is from openclipart.org.

Since I don't have a flannel to post this week, and love is on my mind, I thought I'd share four things I love about Flannel Friday.

1. Friends. One of the most fun parts of attending a national conference was being able to meet face-to-face with colleagues I've "met" though Flannel Friday.

2. Variety. If I'm looking for something new to spice up storytime, I know I have so many resources and ideas just waiting for me to pick from because of this community.

3. Creativity. I value the creative spirit everyone displays in their posts and suggestions on the Facebook page. Not everyone is an artist (myself included!) but I've adapted so many neat ideas to fit my abilities (and time!).

4. Enthusiasm. We all know that working with kids and creating all the programming we do takes a lot of energy. And while we love it, we all have our hard days. When everyone is asking you millions of questions while you're trying to set up for a program. Your boss suddenly needs you to THIS, when you would really like to be finishing THAT. Your own child is sick/Dog needs surgery/Went on the worst first date ever (again)/Had a flat tire/Put your shirt on backwards and inside out and didn't notice until a parent pointed it out. In other words-- our personal lives sometimes invade our mental space and getting psyched up for the 500th storytime of your career might seem insurmountable. This community helps me to be excited about each storytime I do, even when patron, responsibilities, or life is getting in the way.

Can you believe we're four?! What started out as one librarian influencing a few others has grown into a Facebook page, website, Pinterest, and generally awesome thing. Being the awesome, kid-oriented people we are, we're putting on our party pants and bringing out the glitter. We've celebrated a few different ways, but for this March 4th, we're looking at you. Yes. You.

Welcome to the Guest-Post Palooza!!!! Anyone make "try new things" your resolution to rock this year? Have a prop, flannel story, puppet activity, draw and tell, scarf song, or other awesome idea you use something to blow the minds of your youngsters and their grownups? Thought about participating but didn't want the commitment of creating your own blog? We get it. We don't judge. But we do want YOU. We learn so much from each other. But in order to do that, we have to put ourselves out there, stand by our work, and share what we know!

If you're willing to rock it this year by contributing to our Guest-Post Palooza to honor four crazy years of professional development, community building, puffy paint disasters, milk filter experiments, and lots and lots of glue, let us know! We will pair you up with a blogger who will make a hospitable place for your stuff on their blog.

To let us know you're willing to share your blog and serve as a gracious host, or to let us know that you're ready to jump in and share what you know, fill out this form. Sharon and Mollie are working overtime and one of them will contact you with the details of your match up.

Have questions about this? Check out our FAQs page.

While nearly all the flannelboards I make these days are something I saw on Flannel Friday, there are two people who, when I see their stuff, I always think, "shoot, I wish I would have thought of that!"

1. Jane at Piper Loves the Library. I envy her artistic abilities. I started backing my flannels with black after seeing some of her posts, like this set of dinosaurs. And another "oldie but goodie--" mice glued to paint stir sticks.

2. Mel of Mel's Desk. Mel has a way of convincing me that flannelizing things like Raffi's song "Thanks a Lot" is a great idea for baby storytime. (Check out her Rattlin' Bog post for another example). Mel also inspires me to want to a)create more original flannels, so that b)I can create and share templates to allow others to recreate the ideas more easily!

But my new favorite, guaranteed hit, flannel comes from SLC Book Boy. This rhyme about turkeys pretending to be other things, coupled with the cartoon-style figures is comedy gold.

Okay... take two. Pro tip: put your glasses on before attempting to delete a placeholder post. Accidentally clicked on the roundup one! Ack! So a few of you may have enjoyed the roundup already.. here's my attempt to recreate what I said!

Ideas for Spring:
Kites somehow always make their way into my storytimes in the spring. Kathryn has a fun rhyme she wrote about kites over at Fun With Friends at Storytime.

Itsy Bitsy Mom flannelized the book Hatch by Katie Cox and I know her storytimers will be so excited to see all the animals that hatch from those eggs.

The Library Village brings their take on a Flannel Friday favorite: Rainbow Stew. I like including rainbows in with my St. Patrick's Day storytimes because it relates to the holiday but also allows you to choose quality storytime material.

Christine at Felt Board Ideas shares Five (happy!) Little Shamrocks just in time for St. Patrick's Day.

Play!
Brooke's Play and Learn flannelboard station features a Mr. Potato Head activity this month. What a fun way to encourage children to play and create story.

A Librarian Less Ordinary shares an idea for colored rice she's been using in her kindergarten and first grade centers.

Animals Galore:
Bridget flannelized her dog. Like her real dog. Seriously. It's amazing. Hi, Chester!

Monica at Ram Sam Storytime has updated her farm animals set. Such a clever and time-saving strategy.

Summer Reading:
Thrive After Three has two ideas for summer reading, a board game and a collaborative book share.

Jane at Piper Loves the Library has several ideas for the Fizz, Boom, Read summer program.

Are you including dinosaurs in your summer storytimes? Storytime Katie has 10 Little Dinos that are a must make!

As always, check the Flannel Friday website, Facebook, and Pinterest accounts for more information and past Flannel Friday creations. Are you on the Flannel Friday map? Add yourself via this survey.

I have the honor of hosting two great flannel ideas from Youth Services Librarian, Karen Hiebert. You probably recognize her name if you're active on the Flannel Friday or Storytime Underground Facebook pages; Karen is always sharing great things!

Today she brings you H-E-A-R-T, a Valentine's version of traditional song, B-I-N-G-O and Red Heart, Red Heart, a love-filled adaptation of Brown Bear, Brown Bear.


Karen says, "My Bingo has the traditional bingo song (b-i-n-g-o) but instead I would say "H-e-a-r-t" and as each letter is taken away, I remove them from the flannel board. It was my first time doing these so it needs [a] little work. But the parents and kids seemed to know the bingo song pretty easily." This was inspired by Storytime Katie!

Karen says,  "[My] version goes: Red heart, red heart, what do you see? I see a red heart smiling at me, etc. Until the very end when I put a LARGE green valentines day card in the middle that says "I Love You" and tell the kids happy valentines day!!" I also try to put the individual hearts into a heart shape as well." Check out this video by littlestorybug to see the rhyme being performed.

I've written before about Flannel Friday and what it means to me. Being the only person who does youth programming at my library is often lonely and isolated feeling, especially because I'm a person who likes to brainstorm ideas collaboratively. I am so thankful for communities on Twitter, Flannel Friday, Storytime Underground, Thrive Thursday... (the list goes on) for filling that gap for me.

I waited too long this year to request the pumpkin books I like to read in storytime, so instead I decided to try a candy-themed storytime as my nod to the holiday. It was fun! Picture books about/featuring candy are surprisingly few and far between, but I found some I liked and then went on a hunt for rhymes. These are the two I ended up using on the flannelboard:

Tis the season.... for Halloween, Pumpkins, and pretty Autumnal leaves:

Old McRainbow's Pumpkin Farm at Fun with Friends at Storytime is a fun twist on a few classic ideas.

Anne brings you an idea for a Jack 'o Lantern play set for children to play with during their library visits.

Bonus! Anne also has Halloween Hilda, a fun prop story similar to The Very Hungry Caterpillar or There Was and Old Lady Who Swallowed a Bat.

Ms. Jenna flannelized the picture book The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything by Linda Williams. Ms. Jenna's got some mad puffy paint skills! :)

Bonus! Ms. Jenna also brings a flannel version of an Iranian folktale, The Singing Pumpkin. Cutest ogre ever award?

Linda created a fun Haunted Houses prop using ideas from several other Flannel Friday posts that she found on the Flannel Friday pinterest boards. (Shameless plug!) :D

Christine has several ideas for using fall colored leaves on the felt board. She has some good tips for reinforcing the concept of size with the leaves, for those of you looking to incorporate math literacy into your storytimes.

Another inspired by Flannel Friday post, here's Tara's version of Polka Dotty Monster.

Head over to Story Time with the Library Lady for some fun flannel ideas for a pumpkin play set and a Haunted House peek-a-boo board.

With our animal friends:

Tweak, Tweak by Eve Bunting gets a cute flannelized version courtesy of Thrive After Three.

Katie F. shares a cute idea for talking about animal homes, Do You Know Where I Live? Katie has shared about her recent refocus, but I'm thankful she's still going to be posting new ideas, because they are great!

An open ended set of "If You Give a ________  a ________" is a sure discussion starter! Bridget has the details.

Do you need to celebrate a mouse birthday soon? Miss Kristie has a cute puppet/flannel combo to share.

Nikarella's back after a 6 month absence (we miss you!) with a flannelized version of Sylvie by Jennifer Sattler

Posts that defy categorization:

Miss Meg has Lots of (cute) Cars!

Andrea has an update on her Flannels for Botswana project. I was happy to spend some evenings thrifting for books and creating flannels to send with the kits. And I was able to upcycle some boxes I'd been saving. So really, it was a win all around. :D

Thanks for visiting the July 5th Flannel Friday round-up! I'm pleased to host for the first time ever!! Bunches of fun ideas to share. Without further ado....

Have an old easel lying around that has good bones but needs a face lift? Thrive After Three has got a great post about refurbishing an easel to give it new life.

Kathryn has a cute hot dog flannel for us that would pair well with Mo Willems' The Pigeon Wants a Hot Dog.

Looking for a way to spice up your bugs storytime? Anne highlights a way to use scarves with the traditional song Spider on the Floor. Miss Tara found some adorable stuffed flies (there's something I never thought I'd say!) and found a song to match: Five Little Flies by Johnette Downing.

Arrr Matey! Joy's got a piratey flannel to sing to the tune of This Old Man.

Need a new matching game for storytime? How about Artistic Literacy's Matching Mushrooms?

Speaking of food-- what about using plastic food as props for a song about pickin' up fruits and vegetables? Sandy's got a great idea for adapting the song to include many fruits and vegetables without the song lasting forever too!

Lisa's got a flannel about a bunch of stuff you can't get in a booooat up north. (Minnesota in the house!) But a good set for including lots of kids in the rhyme.

And from across the pond, LQ issues a plea: help make some cute, pre-cut felt shapes relevant to babies in rural Scotland. Head over to her site and brainstorm away!

And that, friends, is your round-up. As always, visit Flannel Friday's website, Facebook, or Pinterest for more great ideas. Angie at Mrs. Andre's Library is your hostess with the mostess next week.

I've mentioned our storytime kits before, and this spring I updated our Bugs kit. One of the activities I put in there is a Butterfly Matching File Folder game. While I chose to do it as a file folder since it has to fit in a medium-sized plastic tote, you could easily make the images bigger for a flannel board application. Thanks Mama Jenn for the idea and the link to the great images. I copied the ones I was interested in into Word and scaled them to fit the dimensions of my file folder.

Minnesota reporting in with a "Feels Like" temperature around 23. Watching the wind whip snow around outside the windows as light rain falls, it seems like poor timing to be posting about umbrellas. But its April! At least the sun is poking out from time to time.


Felt Board Ideas is a great site for flannel board inspiration and rhymes! She even includes a video demonstrating this rhyme, and offering suggestions for ways to extend the learning after or before the rhyme.

The umbrellas were created by an awesome teen volunteer, and were inspired by this pin (currently not available from the original source).

As you can see, each umbrella is ~6 inches from tip to tip.

View Flannel Friday Contributors in a larger map

Some fun Flannel Friday facts for all you cartophiles out there:

• 50 of the 145 identified themselves as bloggers by including a website or blog link (the Blue placemarks on the map)
• Of the 145 respondents as of March 13th, 133 are located in the United States, and 12 are international, with Canada leading the way at 9. Also represented are Australia, New Zealand, and the UK (Scotland, specifically) with one participant apiece.
• We are apparently quite popular in British Colombia, garnering 4 followers. But had showings from Ontario (2), Saskatchewan (2), and the Northwest Territories (1) to round out our Canadian contingent.

• California can claim the most Flannel Friday Map participants with 12. Other concentrated areas of Flannel Friday participation include Illinois (8), Texas, Indiana, Ohio (7), Michigan (6), and Washington, Wisconsin, Virginia, North Carolina, New York, and Colorado (5).
• Under-represented states include: Hawaii, Alaska, Idaho, New Mexico, Louisiana, Tennessee, Vermont, Delaware, and Rhode Island, which were the only states in the United States without any map participants. 
• For those of you keeping track, that means we hit 41/50, for an 82% Flannelized United States.

• We had 6 "Miss (Fill in the Blank)," 2 "Ms. (Fill in the Blank), and 1 "Mr. (Fill in the Blank). We also had 3 "Library (Fill in the Blank)" names/nicknames. 
• Cate/Kathleen/Kathy/Kathryn/Katie was the most common first name used, with 10. The Jen/Jenni/Jenny/Jennifer crew showed with a strong 5, closely tailed by Mary/Mary (Fill in the Blank)'s, Laura's, and Sarah/Sara's with 4 a piece. Also making repeat appearances were Amy's (yay Amy's), Erin's, Melissa/Lissa's, and Sue/Susan's with 3 each.

A big THANK YOU to everyone who contributed so far! You're Flannel Friday All-Stars!

The camaraderie among those in the Flannel Friday community always astounds me. Whether on Twitter, Facebook, or blog comments, so many of the members are ready and willing to offer help, support, and ideas.

Professionally, knowing that I have such a vast network of librarians and early childhood workers with all kinds of experiences to draw upon is incredible. My staff here is very supportive of all the crazy things I do, but we each have our own duties to deal with. So while they are ready and willing to accept delegated tasks, or assist me with programs, I'm still the one using all my creative energy to come with with the ideas. After awhile, even finding a few, simple storytime extension activities started to feel overwhelming. Flannel Friday came into my life at just the right moment, when the excitement and newness of a position was wearing off and the daunting reality of coming up with all that content by myself threatened my confidence. Now I have Kay and Katie, Pinterest and lots of other blogs to check for ideas.

(Gonna get sappy here now, folks!) Personally, Flannel Friday has given me a tribe (see here and here). Future Librarian Superhero Anna and I were able to meet in person at our state's conference this year after a job move put her in the same metro area. Anne at So Tomorrow has been giving me first-time mom advice to pass along to my (currently pregnant! yay!) sister via Twitter. Kendra (Read Sing Play) and Mel (Mel's Desk) give me recipes, interpersonal relationship advice, and Sharon (Rain Makes Applesauce) is a great cheerleader. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. I'm the kind of person who has friends, family, and acquaintances from different pieces of my lives scattered all over the country, but very few actually where I live now. Having such an active group of ladies on Twitter has helped meet my needs for friendship in a different way. Nothing substitutes with good, old-fashioned, face-to-face communication, but owning and recognizing my tribe gives me a place to belong. On days when I'm just not feeling my best, I know that I can count on my Flannel Friends to support me.

Friendship, in the US for sure, can be an imprecise, imperfect term. Some people use it for every person they meet. Others only for those they count as their closest confidants. Is is possible (or necessary) to differentiate between "online" friends and those we know "in real life?" Google "friendship in the digital age" and you get more than 3 million results. Is someone whom you know IRL more a friend than someone you interact with only online, even if you only see that person IRL once or twice a year or less? Beyond being a great resource, and source of personal support, being a part of this online community has really made me think in the last two years about what defines "community" and "friend," and how collaboration really works. I can't wait to see how Flannel Friday evolves and grows over the next two years, and beyond!

This was one of the first flannel board sets I ever made. In the craft drawers at my previous job, I found several sheets of these pizza toppings. I cut them out and covered one side with contact paper and glued felt to the back. The pizza pie I cut from a large sheet of cardboard that came with a poster I purchased. My mom helped me cover it with flannel. This has been a handy little flannelboard to have to take with on outreach visits, but velcro dots don't stick as well to the flannel as they do to felt.

I have enough pieces that all the kids get one for each hand, and then we build the pizza one topping at a time, ending with the pieces of cheese. I have always thought it would be cute to get a pizza box to put the finished product in, but for this time I brought a pizza peel from home and thanked the kids for getting my lunch ready for the oven for me. :)

I really can't take any credit for this week's Flannel Friday. But in case some of you are newer members of the group and didn't get to see this idea when Melissa posted it originally... check out her 5 Little Nails post, which links to where she explains how to make this style of prop on her blog.

I emailed her posts to one of our information assistants who's got a great eye for paper engineering (she's an origami guru too!) and asked her if she'd be willing to monkey around with this idea. I've talked a bunch about different projects I've created using cardboard I saved from the boxes our rolls of RFID tags came in, and this is no exception. The tubes used in the boxes are wider and a bit shorter than a paper towel tube, but it worked just fine.


I had the kids make a fist with one hand and pound it into the palm of the other as I twisted the nail around during the rhyme. They got really excited about that.