Saturday, July 24, 2010

More Felt Ideas

I think felt is great! You can make so many flannel board activities/games/stories with it. Although you can buy them, you can make your own with some creativity and a little felt. I find that looking online at other people's work helps me figure out ideas for projects. Here are a few ideas:


-Freight Train felt story (you need a train car out of a variety of colors, similar to this idea, read the book by Donal Crews and place the train cars on the board, or have your little one retell the story with the pieces.)

-Old McDonald's Farm (make a barn and animals and sing as you put up the animals one by one). If you want some templates to make your animals, try this website, or google coloring pages for the animal you're trying to make. You can make it as simple or elaborate as time allows!

-Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed (make a bed and five monkeys. I used a die-cut as a school district office to cut my monkeys, but that's not necessary. Just search on etsy.com for monkey ideas)

-Snowmen (easy shapes to cut out and then assemble on the board). You can even sing this song to go along.

-Felt People/Face (cut out a basic person shape and clothes to go on him/her. Or cut a large circle for a face and then pieces for eyes, nose, etc.)

-Shapes (use different colors and cut different shapes. Use them to practice shapes, colors, counting, fractions, or make things as if they are felt Lego's)

-Five Speckled Frogs (I love this story and song! Here's one pattern you could use from Early Learning Activities.) Here are (one version of) the words of the song:
Five little speckled frogs,
Sat on a speckled log,
Eating the most delicious grub.
Yum! Yum!
One jumped into the pool,
Where it was nice and cool.
Then there were four green speckled frogs.
(Repeat until all are in the pool)

These are some of the ones we do at our house. What other felt ideas do you have?

Side note: If you have access to a die cut machine (either a home machine on one in a school district office) you can cut felt with it, although you'll want to put a piece of paper on top of the felt for the machine to work best. Our local school district lets anyone use their machine, and it was great for cutting things like vehicles and animals!