Flannel Friday: 5 Ferocious Lions

I made these not-so-ferocious lions to go with a rhyme from Finger Tales by Joan Hilyer Phelps.

Deep in the jungle
What did I hear?
Five ferocious lions
roaring loud and clear.
"ROAR!" said the lions
"SCAT!" said I.
And one ferocious lion
ran away...Good bye!

This lion craft is also from the book above.  These required some prep work for my daycare group, but they really enjoyed them and I think they're cute, cute!  The kids' versions, of course, were colored and WAY better than mine.



Books used for lion storytime:

Roar! A noisy counting book by Pamela Edwards.  A lion tries to find friends, but his roar scares them away before he finds a friend.  I jumbled laminated numbers 1-10 at the bottom of my magnet board.  After each grouping of animals, one child came up, found the number and we put our numbers in order 1 to 10 on the board.  This was a fun way to extend the story and get some number practice in.

Sitting down to eat by Bill Harley. This features a lion and way too many other guests coming over for a party.

We're going on a lion Hunt by Margery Cuyler.  We didn't read this one, but acted it out instead. 

Flannel Friday: Monday the Bullfrog

 Here's a cute little story that I originally got from this cute frog book that my son received when he was a tiny baby: Monday the Bullfrog by Matthew Van Fleet.

In short, Monday is a very hungry bullfrog, and he eats something different on each day of the week. The story gives you clues like "crunchy and red" (a crab) or "furry and white" (mouse). I cheated a teensy bit with the caterpillar and bee - changed those from the book, but for the life of me, I could NOT make a firefly out of flannel on the day I made this set! I think it's fun to have the animal-food-items poking out of their paper pockets, just a bit, so the kids get a small clue of what they'll be. I tell this story with a frog puppet, but you could also use just a flannel frog. The big surprise at the end is that on Saturday, Monday the bullfrog wants something sweet to eat . . . so he eats "you!" In the back of the book itself there is a mirror; I use a little dollar store variety. (Mine is a bit big, but it is easier for the kids to get the idea, I think).

Three Little Pigs

I did a Pig Storytime this week and we had a good time with the Three Little Pigs.  I have some fabric houses that I use for a variety of things, but they were originally made for this story and these finger puppets.  The fabrics are representational, ah hem, of bricks, sticks and straw.

Doing a finger puppet show for a group of kids is not the best medium, but I did it on purpose. I did it to model for them what they could do with their craft for the day.  I think that's important.  Yes, we do a lot of really neat things in storytime and we have kinds of neat props and puppets.  I told them "those finger puppets are really silly, aren't they?  But they're so fun! And YOU can do this yourself at home!"

My group is a daycare, so the teachers took their "stick puppets" to pass out later in the day.  Oh my, these kids were sooo excited over them, and I had little voices ringing out all over asking "where's my pigwolf??"