Flannel boards are a huge part of story times in preschool and toddler education. I do not have much training or experience with preschool education, but I currently teach a once-a-week 'school readiness' class for 2-5 year olds to get them ready for preschool and kindergarten. So I decided I wanted my own flannel board. They aren't THAT expensive at places like Lakeshore, but I knew I could make my own. I googled plans for making your own flannel board, hit Joann's, and here is the result:
I bought a cheap bulletin board to start. I had intended to buy a prepared stretched canvas, but they were pretty expensive. Then I bought enough flannel to cover it and staple it to the back. I picked this fun blue/green tie-dye look flannel, but the internet recommends solid light blue or light green, because those are more univerally useful for stories that take place in water or outside, and they are just mellow background colors. We'll see how well my background does. I borrowed my friend's staple gun to attach the fabric, and her suggestion was, "stretch that fabric TIGHT before you staple." I did stretch it tight, but I didn't stretch it TIGHT, so there are some loose spots, but hopefully it will be okay.
For my first story, later this week, I'll read "I'm the Biggest Thing in the Ocean" by Kevin Sherry, and then have the children put up each piece as we retell it. I got the idea and the template for all the characters so you can make your own pieces out of felt, at Storytime Katie. I also bought a few sets of pre-made felt pieces from the Etsy shop Storytelling Fun. I will combine some from the Ocean set I bought from Etsy and a few that I made from the template to do the story with the kids. Making them wasn't too hard, but obviously buying them was even easier. And the bought ones are quite cute.
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| I made the whale and little blue fish. I purchased the jellyfish and crab |
I haven't used these yet in a storytime, but when I do, I'll post the results...if they worked for me. I also bought some small canvas boards that I would like to cover with the extra flannel so the kiddos can have their own flannel lapboards, but that is a future project!
The flannel board worked okay with the preschool group, but I need more practice on how to make it fun for kids and keep the chaos under control. They really liked grabbing the felt things and sticking them up on the board. I also used the flannel board for an adult ESL activity on building sentences, where I had different sentence parts written on construction paper and I glued some scrap felt to the backs. Then they could rearrange the sentences on the flannel board. That worked pretty well, though it was a lot of time spent making the felt sentence pieces.
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