Flannel Friday: Mrs. McNosh Hangs Up Her Wash

After taking a long break from FF during which I just copied flannels that I've admired by other Flannel Fridayers, my offering this week was made by my colleague Lou to tell the story Mrs. McNosh Hangs Up Her Wash by Sarah Weeks with a clothesline. I love Lou's detailed pieces!  Many of them are even double-sided to make them sturdier to last through multiple uses by children.

And here's what part of it looks like on the line:

Of course, we passed out the flannel pieces and asked children to come and hang their items on the line when they were mentioned in the story.  It was a hit!  We found a few pics of flannelized or photocopy-and-laminate clothesline versions of the book on various blogs, so we don't know who to credit with the original idea. And although we chose not to use them, there are some Mrs. McNosh activities and printables available here.

When we someday do Mrs. McNosh again, we'll figure out a way to stabilize our line--we just tied it between two chairs, but as pieces were added, some twisted up and around so that they weren't all hanging straight down.  There are so many pieces that it might work better with a few smaller lines rather than one long one.

Since Halloween is over now and there's no rush, next week I'll post the flannel song I used for the two weeks leading up to Halloween.

Check out all of this week's Flannel Friday posts here.

Happy Friday!

Boo Hoo Bird Flannel Story

This week's creation is Boo Hoo Bird by Jeremy Tankard, for a bird-themed storytime in two weeks.  I tried to make my felt figures look just like characters in the book.  I can't wait to tell the story in storytime! I love Mr. Tankard's books!

This is my first contribution to Flannel Friday!  You can check out all of this week's Flannel Friday creations here.

Cows in the Kitchen flannel story

I love making flannel stories...it's relaxing, and I got to use for the first time the pretty scissors my mom gave me this week.  Here are my flannel figures for Cows in the Kitchen by June Crebbin, to be used during storytime sometime in the near future.

Big and Little

I am fortunate to have been invited to participate in a grant called Ready to Learn with Iowa Public Television, and one of their new programs currently in development is a fun, engaging cartoon called Peg + Cat, which includes match concepts for preschoolers.  This inspired the toddler storytime I'm finally posting today, which highlights the concepts of relative size and spatial capacity. 

The books we read were:

Tiny Little Fly by Michael Rosen


Big Little by Leslie Patricelli

And as a flannel story, A House for Birdie by Stuart J. Murphy. The idea for making this particular story into a flannel story came from Miss Mary Liberry at Flannel Friday.

I realized too late that I had made the smallest round bird gold, so I had to change the names of a couple of the birds to match the story.

We also did some action rhymes, but I can't post them because I didn't put into my plan where I found them.

As a craft, parents and children traced their hands onto green construction paper--the parent's hand is big and the child's hand is little.  Then the parent cut them out and the child taped them to our windows, where we had put up a tree that we intended to change through the seasons (buds and flowers in spring, leaves in the summer, colored leaves in the fall, etc.), but it isn't holding up as well as we thought it would, so it may be more temporary than that.  Our unseasonably warm weather this spring has also kicked all of the vegetation into high gear, so it looked more like May here last month than March.  I love that!

Because of the backlight on the windows, you can see only the silhouette of the trees, and to the left of the second tree, there is a tiny pond with a duck swimming there.  The tree was created by one of our interns, and the green hands look very leaflike, I think.

I love to do this kind of craft occasionally that allows children to have their work displayed in the library and that adds warmth and color to the children's department.

Snow!

When I planned this toddler storytime way back in October, I was assuming we'd have the kind of winter we usually have in Iowa--snowy and cold!  But this year has been unusual and February feels more like March or April.  There's very little snow left on the ground, so this storytime would have been better titled "Do You Remember Snow?"

We read No by Claudia Rueda, Snow by Manya Stojic, and Snowflakes: A Pop-up Book by Jennifer Preston Chushcoff.

Our flannel story was One Snowy Day by Tammi Salzano.

This is a flannel story I haven't seen posted anywhere else yet, but when I saw the book, I knew it would make a fun flannel board.  Because there are so many pieces, I set it up ahead of time so I could just flip it around and lead children in counting the objects from each page in the book.

Between stories, we did a snowflake dance with the song "Snowflake, Snowflake" from H.U.M. (Highly Usable Music) by Carole Peterson.  I gave children squares of white tissue paper to use as snowflakes and we followed the actions in the song.  It was a big hit, especially when we had to try to keep our snowflakes in the air with our breath.  H.U.M. is my absolute favorite CD for storytime songs.  We always begin each toddler storytime with "Hello, Everybody, Yes Indeed" and end each storytime with "Goodbye Rap."

Our craft this week was making snowflake designs.  I spread a thin layer of white, kid-friendly (washable) paint on some paint trays and put 5 or 6 snowflake stamps I bought from Oriental Trading on each tray. I gave each child a piece of colored construction paper and they stamped snowflake designs on their papers.

Next year if we do this craft again, I think I'll add glitter!

Colors

My favorite flannel story to date is Dog's Colorful Day by Emma Dodd, also posted on Flannel Friday by a few folks.  For this storytime for two and three-year-olds, we read Kid Tea by Elizabeth Ficocelli (the parents laughed during this one!), Knock! Knock! by Anna-Clara Tidholm, and Red, Yellow, Blue and You by CynthiaVance:

And here's my Dog's Colorful Day flannel:

The only spot permanently attached is the black one on his ear.  The others I added as I told the story so that when dog takes, I take off the other spots and he's clean again!

We also did a flannel song--Bluebird.  I kept one of each of the colored birds and distributed the rest to children.  Each child brought her/his bird to the flannel board when we sang the verse about the color he/she had.  I've done similar color-themed flannel songs since then, and my two and three-year olds are getting the hang of waiting for their turn and putting their flannel object on the board--the process gets smoother each time we do it.  I know I got this version and the idea from one of the books I have with storytime ideas, but I'm going to have to go through them to find the reference and I'll add it this week when I find it.

Bluebird, bluebird, through my window.
Bluebird, bluebird, through my window.
Bluebird, bluebird, through my window.
Hey diddle dum a day-day.
(Repeat with other colors.)

Three Little Pigs

My second flannel board was part of a Piggies storytime for 2 and 3 year-olds.  We read:
Oink, Oink Benny by Barbro Lindgren, Pig Takes a Bath by Michael Dahl, and Busy Piggies by John Schindel.

I told the story of the Three Little Pigs with this flannel board:

We ended storytime by singing, with puppets, "Night Night to the Animals" from Michele Valeri's CD Little Ditties for Itty Bitties--of course, there's a pig in the song. I absolutely love that album and have frequently used a song or two in storytimes.  Our craft was a simple pig finger puppet.