"Over in the Meadow" Felt Board Story

We are studying the weather changes that come in the spring, including the animals coming out when it starts to get warm. So, I decided to read the book Over in the Meadow and made some felt board animals to along with it. This book is great for counting and rhyming and learning about what different animals do. 

DIY Feltboard

Here is a felt board I made for the classroom awhile back and now use it with my son. It is just a piece of cardboard with black felt glued on and then a cardboard border with colored masking tape to decorate it. Very simple. I also made another one which I can't find now, but it was thicker. I used 2 empty fabric bolts from the store and taped them together. It takes a lot of tape, but was quite sturdy actually.

 Remember, you don't have to use felt to make pieces for your felt board. Laminated pictures with velcro on the back works as well. I made 4 sets of some different things that L is familiar with. The first is food as shown above.

Farm Animals

 Vehicles

Toys

To make these, I photocopied the images from a book I got at the library, colored them with crayons and then laminated and added the velcro.
I think this way is easier than cutting out felt, although I have made some of those as well. I like the idea I saw at library storytime for making felt pieces, using fabric paint for the details.

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Storytime Sunday: Homes Continued

Here are 2 of the very best books about houses that I know. 

"A web is a house for a spider. A bird builds its nest in a tree. There is nothing so snug as a bug in a rug and a house is a house for me!" Everything from a car to a teabag to ink has a house if you think about it long enough. I absolutely love how this book thinks outside the box for the meaning of a house. The illustrations are marvelous and I especially adore the very last 2 pages: "Each creature that's known has a house of its own and the earth is a house for us all." Think about the deeper meaning that could have!

This book is so great for younger ones. It is short and very to the point. The basics of building a house, step by step all the way to moving in. Children will love it and can easily sequence the steps or act out the story.

So some of the continuing activities we did this week about building houses include:

This is AM class's venn diagram comparing 2 different houses from different areas of the world. They were able to come up with some similarities and differences.

This, however is PM class's venn diagram. And I pretty much had to give them these answers. So, I decided  with the PM class being mostly 3s, they might not be ready for this activity just yet.

 So here is what I made for them instead. A much easier concept. We just talked about the parts of the house and the children were able to take apart and put together the house however they wanted it. Much better results with this. Although I think I will pull out the venn diagram again and give it another try.

We used mini marshmallows and pretzel sticks to build houses as well. They were a lot more difficult to stay together than I thought. Probably should have used regular sized marshmallows. But, as you can see, one little boy persisted and was able to build an entire house and get it to stand up!

Then, we sorted photos of different types of landscapes where your house could be located.

I also printed maps of countries where each of the children's family is from. We talked about the purpose of a map and some of the features of maps. In case you can't see, all the maps are different types. Some are just regular maps and some are topographical, etc. 

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Thinky Linky Thursday: On the Farm

This week, we are studying farm animals. Here are some of the activities we've been doing.

Beans in sensory table with farm animals and props.

Farm animal craft stick puppets. We colored, cut and glued them and then used them to sing Old MacDonald and do some dramatic play. 

Then the kids decided they wanted to have a puppet show and did this on their own. Mostly they were just making noises and not really having the puppets talk, but it was still cute and they were getting the idea of how a puppet show works. Maybe we will extend this interest in the coming weeks.

Then we sorted farm animals by which ones have fur, which have feathers and which have scales. There were, of course, no animals with scales, but I liked the idea of adding that as a choice to allow children to realize that sometimes there are categories that none of the items fit into.

Here is our farm felt board story. You can print these for free at Wondertime. They also come with little paper stands so you can use them as story props or game pieces.

And lastly, we played farm bingo. You can print these at Busy Bee Kid's Printables.

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Storytime Sunday

Today's story, inspired by my son who attempted to swallow a bug today and a twitter friend ;), is There was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly. This classic book has a lot of appeal to preschoolers because well, let's face it, who doesn't think it's funny when an old lady eats a bunch of animals? Anyways, we can get so much out of this book, especially rhyming. Also, you can have the kids sequence the order of the animals she ate. Also, the repetition lends itself to the kids reading along with you.

Felt board pieces are a good visual and a way to get the children involved in the story. I couldn't find a photo of the one we used to have a center I worked at, but it was cool, there was a hole for her mouth and a pouch where you could put the animals in with a clear plastic window so you could see into her stomach. Here is a photo of another Old Lady prop with a hole in the mouth that you can put the animals in. 

And lastly, I found this fun video on Youtube that tells the story.

Brown Bear, Brown Bear

This week we are continuing our study of animals. We are focusing on the book Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See? by Bill Martin, Jr./Eric Carle.

The first thing we did was read the book and put up the animals on the felt board. My class is really into the felt board right now as the librarian has been coming and doing felt board stories once a month. They like to use the pieces to retell the story or make up their own story to act out.

Here is the website that I printed my felt board pieces from because they are just the right size for the felt board, but if you want larger images, you can also use this site.

After we read the book, I used the felt board animals to ask the children questions about animals such as: How many legs does the horse have?, Are there really purple cats?, How many of the animals have tails?, etc. This can lead to the kids coming up with questions of their own and if they can't figure out the answers, this is a great opportunity to say, LET'S GOOGLE IT! Never be afraid to say you don't know the answer in front of the kids even if you do know the answer. It is always more beneficial to take advantage of a teachable moment and let the kids figure out how to find the answer on their own!

The next step in our plan is to make a class book imitating the format of Brown Bear, Brown Bear by using the children's photos and having them write their own name. So it would go something like this: Sam, Sam who do you see? I see Lisa looking at me, etc. We will laminate the book and place it in the library area of the classroom for children to look at and tell the story on their own.