Flannel Friday--I Spy Forest Animals

Recently, I've been trying to up the ante on the games/activities we do in storytime. For a while I did a lot of games in the vein of Little Mouse, but they weren't always well-received and I felt like there had to be more robust options.  I'm trying one today that I'm calling I Spy, but I won't be spying something actually in the room. I got the idea from The Stillwater Public Library Children's Department blogpost about their forest animals storytime, but I adapted the clues a little bit.  I'm excited about this activity because we'll definitely be doing a lot of talking and critical thinking. I also like this because, like Little Mouse, it's easily adapted to any theme or age group. You could definitely make the clues harder or easier depending on the audience.

Update after storytime: Since we had a smaller group (at least for the summer, about 15), this activity went really well and we were able to talk about the different animals. The rabbit clues stumped them at first--they thought it was a kangaroo. But, I said it lived in America and liked to eat veggies from gardens and they figured it out. I'd thought the porcupine might be hard, so I made a point to talk about one that showed up in Into the Outdoors when we read it. They were able to guess it immediately during the game.  The kids seemed to enjoy the activity and I'll definitely do similar ones in the future. 

Miss Mollie is hosting this week's Flannel Friday roundup and it's her birthday so go say hi! If you're new to Flannel Friday, check it out on Facebook, Pinterest and on the blog.

***Can you tell I don't really love to make flannels? I use real life images whenever possible because I think kids see a lot of cartoon-y images already. I want them to know what a real porcupine looks like! That being said, I do use traditional flannel pieces too. I'll post some eventually : )