Flannel Friday--Up, Down, and Around!

Confession: I get a LOT of my storytime ideas from other people buy this one ks all mine! As a librarian just a few months into my second year on the job, these are the things that excite me. That and when baked goods appear on the break room table.

Cupcakes aside, here's the down-low on my awesome story extension:

As part of my garden storytime, I decided to read Up, Down, and Around by Katherine Ayers. This seems to be a pretty popular choice, and for good reason. The book is informational, repetitive, and rhythmic, so awesome for storytime. In order to extend the fun, I made a flannel board activity so we could "act out" the story. 

First, I created cards to show the directions: up, down and around. I thought about creating them in Publisher, but decided to be all retro and just use a marker on notecards. 

Next, I used clipart and Google images to find photos of all the veggies in the book. I figured real photos would be better than any cartoony felt veggies I could create. Also, there were 12 veggies and that's a lot of pieces to make in felt. 

3 of 12 veggies

Then, I wrote the direction the veggie grows on the back of the card so I wouldn't have to think critically in the middle of the game. And, I laminated each card and stuck velcro on the back.

With the kids, I showed them the directional cards first. Then I pulled out one veggie at a time and we did the correlating action: jumping for up, crouching for down, and twirling for around. We took our time on each veggie so that everyone could catch up, which, I've found is important for 2-year-olds. 

So that's it! Check out this week's Flannel Friday Roundup at Thrive After Three: http://thriveafterthree.com/2014/04/26/flannel-friday-roundup-42514/