Flannel Friday ~ Keeping Warm

Despite our (mostly) lack of snow recently I’ve been forging ahead with my winter themed stories, at least there was a little bit of snow last week, altough it’s all gone again.  So, my theme last week was about staying warm and being cozy.

I began with a felt board called Quilts Galore.

Quilts Galore
5 colorful quilts with patches galore,
1 covered Rabbit and then there were four.
4 colorful quilts as pretty as can be,
1 covered Kitty and then there were three.
3 colorful quilts with patches red and blue,
1 covered Fox and then there were two.
2 colorful quilts made just for fun,
1 covered Squirrel and then there was one.
1 colorful quilt left out in the sun,
It covered puppy and then there were none.
–  found on Finger Plays and Action Rhymes Blog
I changed the original version to be animals instead of child names as I have more than 5 children, usually, and this way I could make some cute little animal friends to liven up the felt board.

Later on in storytime we did a mitten matching game (I’ve seen a few others out there in Flannel Friday Land!)  For my toddler class, I put one of the mittens, from each pair, on the felt board and hid the matching ones around the room.  Each child went to find 2 mittens each and when they found their mittens they had to match them to the other half of the pair on the board.  For my older crowd I hid all of the mittens, each kid went to look for one and then had to look around the room to find the other kid who had the matching one, then they went up to the board together to put the matching pair on the board.

The storytime book we did today was based on the book The Jacket I Wear in the Snow by Shirley Neitzel.  I only used this with my older crowd and had the kids help me tell the rebus story by saying the words with the pictures over them as we read this repetitive story.  It’s like a “This is the House that Jack Built” style, for those of you not familiar with the book.

A close up of the sweater, ’cause that’s my favorite piece 🙂

You can find the rest of the Flannel Friday round-up at Andrea’s blog.