Flannel Friday Roundup

Happy Friday everyone! I'm pretty new to blogging so if this is your first time at Lovin' the Library, welcome!

We have some wonderful submissions this week to help make storytime planning easier during summer reading craziness.

As we all know, bodily functions make storytime that much more fun, so Anne at So Tomorrow has revamped a rhyming puppet story about burping fish.

If you're looking to round out your folktale repertoire, Amy at The Show Me Librarian is sharing an oral retelling of Toads and Diamonds that uses flannel board enhancements.

For anyone thinking ahead and planning a back to school themed storytime for your rising kindergartners or for a family storytime, Bridget has her own take on a previous Flannel Friday post. Check out her version of The Lonely Bus Driver.

Miss Sue of Library Village has solved the age-old problem of books being perfect for storytime, except for being too small to share with a group. Her version of Rock-a-Bye Animals is really adorable.

Kathryn is sharing a fun, interactive rhyme to go along with her hot air balloon post from last year over at Fun with Friends at Storytime.

If you're in the Midwest right now, Miss Tara's post including a cute puppet version of The Big Storm is very timely. 

My own post is a version of One Dog Canoe that I'm excited to use in my camping storytime next week.

Thanks for stopping by this week's roundup! If you want to learn more about Flannel Friday, just follow the links!
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Flannel Friday--One Dog Canoe

Repetitive books like One Dog Canoe are perfect to tell as flannel board stories because there isn't an elaborate script to memorize. It's basically The Mitten, but in a canoe--animals keep piling in until a small animal (in this case a frog) is the last straw and all the animals all fall out. So, I created this flannel story last year, inspired by Rachel Moani's version. Unfortunately, I can't find a good link to her blog but you can at least see the photo of her completed flannel set. I personally don't have the patience to create elaborate animals out of felt, so I made my version using photos. The girl in the canoe is really me on a camping trip, and the dog is a beautiful Australian Shepherd that I wish was mine :) I got the idea to put myself in the canoe from Rachel's original blog post, so I can't claim that creativity. The animals are laminated clip art or Google images photos that were "labeled for reuse". I did make the canoe out of felt and outlined it in puff paint to give it some depth. I usually use this story with a camping themed storytime, but it would also go well in one about forest animals or even transportation.

Flannel Friday Placeholder

Hi fellow flannel fridayers!

If you want to contribute to this week's roundup please leave a comment with a link to your post. Usually the deadline for submissions is 10 pm Eastern Time on Friday, but if I could have all submissions by 8:30 pm that would be amazing. I'll most likely be away from internet access later in the evening so I want to make sure I get everything posted before then. Thanks!

If you're not familiar with Flannel Friday, check out the blog and/or Pinterest page.

Not-Flannel Friday: Can You Make a Scary Face

So I've been using a lot of props lately in my storytimes and this is one fun example. I guess it's technically a puppet show, but it's more in the vein of Lisa's set up at Thrive After Three: simple, no hiding behind a puppet stage. I will say that it wasn't until I read her post about one-person puppet shows that I felt like it was something I could feasibly do. So if you see this, thanks Lisa! Ok so here's what I did a few weeks ago. I wanted to tell the story Can You Make a Scary Face? which is super interactive already, but I decided to kick it up a notch by adding puppets!

In preparation, I typed out the words of the book so I'd have a script to which to refer during storytime. I did my best to memorize the basic outline, but I wanted the script just in case. Then, I covered the outside of a small book box with a large piece of felt. You could use paper or another type of fabric but I just happened to have felt handy. I used the box to hide the puppets and the script and to act as a basic platform. Now, in the book, the narrator is a ladybug, but I only had a spider so that's what I used. Fortunately, I didn't have to trade the frog in the story for a dinosaur or something.

During storytime, I introduced the story saying that I had a special friend who wanted to talk to them and that they should do whatever he said. The children looked skeptical, but then I pulled out the spider. They were intrigued. Then the spider took over and started ordering them around (Stand up! No I changed my mind! Sit Down!) They needed a reminder to actually do what the crazy spider said, but after that there were lots of giggles as kids and grownups stood up, found a bug on their nose, wiggled it onto their shirts, danced it off, and made scary faces to scare away the the huge frog that showed up. I was actually really surprised at how much they seemed to enjoy it. Success!

Please excuse my lame photo. I forgot to take one before I disassembled my fabric-covered box. 

If you want more Flannel Friday posts, head over to What Happens in Storytime!