I love cats. I've got two of them snuggled up and snoring/drooling next to me right now. The poor things aren't spoiled at all. But I digress. Let's move on to felt cats, shall we?
Ah, there we go. And as you can see, we've got a cat version of BINGO going on here. You can see more BINGO ideas here, by the way.
I don't think there's much explanation needed here, but when you flip those letters over, you've got a cat face, which lets the kids know it's time to say "meow" instead of the letter name.
You'll soon have a story time full of adorable meowing children, which should make everyone purrfectly happy. (Sorry, had to.)
Oh, and look! Here's a video just in case you need to sing along and practice a few times:
I love nice, crisp, sweet apples on a nice, crisp, sweet fall day! I also love soft, adorable felt apples on any kind of day. That's why I made my APPLE bingo set, and it's never failed me yet.
But how did those apples even grow? Were apple blossoms involved in some way?? And now that we've got apples, shouldn't we count them? And wait, wouldn't it be fun to hide a worm behind the apples? Yes! Yes! Let's make a huge apple tree set that we can play with in all kinds of ways!
First, let's make them grow. We'll start off with a bare tree, with no little apples growing on it. And then an apple blossom starts to grow...and soon, it turns right into an apple!
I think I was feeling nostalgic for my carefree childhood days when I made this huge Halloween felt board set. I loved all the commercialized, candy-filled holidays when I was a kid, LOL. The colors of Halloween decorations--orange, purple, black and green--were always one of my favorite combinations. Covering the windows in our house with witches and ghosts, jack-o-lanterns and cauldrons... It was just plain FUN.
So, those were all on my mind when I made this set. I just wanted it to be full of cute Halloween fun, and of course I wanted it to be super useful, too. There are plenty of felt board sets that go with just one particular song or story. I need my sets to be multi-use--two or three songs or games per set, at least!
This one fits the bill.
Play Little Broom (a Halloween version of Little Mouse) with these cuties, hiding the adorable laminated witch's broom under the pieces.
Little Broom, little broom, we're searching far and near!
Are you under this black cat? Let's look under here!
Or use the pieces for a Halloween version of Brown Bear, but sprinkle in Halloween vocabulary of course!
And maybe my favorite way to play with these is to use the pieces in a Halloween version of The Enormous Turnip, with all the characters working together to get that huge pumpkin off the vine...
Yep, ghosts are perfect for BINGO variations. But that's not all those cuties are good for. How about a little hide and seek? Oh, with color naming, rhyming and rhythm, and FUN thrown in for good measure. I've got you! Sounds like we need a candy corn and ghost version of Little Mouse, yes?
Yes.
Here they are on video!
Candy corn, candy corn, playing hide and seek,
are you behind the purple ghost?? Let's take a peek!
Or...
Candy corn, candy corn, I'm looking everywhere!
Are you behind the green ghost? Let's check under there!
It's no secret that I love a good variation on BINGO. Some of my favorites include T-R-U-C-K,
T-R-A-I-N, and A-P-P-L-E. You can read about them here, and here, or for a quick review:
But kids don't just love food and vehicles, you know. They are fans of the holidays as well. So I thought, why not give them a little not-so-spooky fun... And if we can mix in a little early literacy without them even knowing, we'll feel super smart and sneaky, won't we. Why yes, yes we will.
The things I don't like about Halloween: being scared and getting cavities. Neither of those are involved in this cute Halloween ghost set, so here you go!
There is a spooky friend I
know and ghost is his name-O.
G-H-O-S-T, G-H-O-S-T, G-H-O-S-T,
and ghost is his name-O!
Flip
over the G to reveal the “boo” on the other side. For the next verse, replace “G” with
“boo”! Continue in this way until you’re
just boo-ing away.
There is a spooky friend I
know, and ghost is his name-O.
Boo-H-O-S-T, Boo-H-O-S-T,
Boo-H-O-S-T and GHOST is his name-O!
You can certainly make this is silly as you'd like, exclaiming BOO! in sppoooky, long drawn out ways, or short, surprising ways! Quiet boos. Loud boos. Medium, fast, slow. No matter what, your kids will be boo-booing, and not boo-hooing, so it's a win :)
Oh, and I can't leave out my favorite Halloween book that just goes along perfectly with these cute ghosts:
Oh, hello vehicles! Aren't you just the most colorful things...
I WISH driving down the freeway was this exciting in real life!
But hey, that's what felt boards are for, right?
So, kids do tend to love vehicles. Trains? Check. Trucks? Check. Rockets? Oh, yep.
So let's put them all together in one big set, and have some good old transportation fun, shall we?
I made up a rhyme to go along with them. Sprinkled transportation vocab and concepts in there. You just pile your vehicles up in the right order before you start, and then place them on the board as you name them. Or--pass out the pieces and have the kids bring them up as you name them.
But wait, there’s more—let’s not forget the boats!
Ship, submarine, and sailboat, they all know how to float.
And finally, our rail friends: train, subway and streetcar.
Look at all these vehicles—they take us near and
far!
And you know how much I love the Little Mouse game, so this set has a laminated steering wheel so we can play that game, too! So many colors and vehicle types to name! So much learning through play to be done!
Steering wheel, steering wheel, playing hide and seek,
Are you behind the ___________?
Let’s take a peek!
OR
Steering wheel, steering wheel, you steer us everywhere.
Are you behind the _____? Let’s check under there!
Okay, that's probably enough transportation to digest for the day. I'll be back with more! I've got sorting cards and more fun ways to use this set...
Hold on, it can't be... Yep, it is already the eighth (and final!) installment of my summer reading ideas for the Tails and Tales theme!
The summer reading program is focusing on animals (tails) and stories (tales) this year. Well, I've got plenty of both types of flannel boards that fit the bill--so I thought it would be fun to add some new songs and movement activities to the mix.
I've been adding new videos of these new songs to my YouTube channel and I've been posting them here on the blog, too.
For my last new song, I've returned to my trusty old dragons. They make me so happy with their cute faces and colorful wings. They've bean soaring around in several other videos, but in keeping with the whole 'tails' theme, I decided to create one more song where we can wiggle our posteriors with abandon. (There really isn't anything much cuter than a group of kids under the age of five wiggling their tails ;) )
So in this simple dragon song, I've decided to count up from zero to five. So many of our songs start with five and count down--and don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with subtracting :) But I'm all for addition, too.
So this one has addition, color naming, rhyming, movement, pretending, direction and comparison words--just a bunch of good old early learning tucked under our dragon wings in a playful way. Which is of course, in my opinion, the only way.
Here we go with the seventh installment of my summer reading ideas for the Tails and Tales theme!
The summer reading program is focusing on animals (tails) and stories (tales) this year. Well, I've got plenty of both types of flannel boards that fit the bill--but I thought it would be fun to add some new songs and movement activities to the mix.
Over the remaining couple of weeks, I'll be adding new videos of these new songs to my YouTube channel. I'll also post them right here on the blog.
You might already know that I love elephants. They are amazing creatures, which is probably why kids love them as much as I do. Of course, they aren't actually quite as colorful as my set, but I do like to make things rainbow-ish ;) Anyway, you also may have seen these beauties in some of my other elephant videos, but I wanted to add some opposite words to the mix.
So here we've got opposites (short and long), a little math and rhyming, and friendship bundled up together. You know: all the good preschooly stuff we love :)
Here we go with the sixth installment of my summer reading ideas for the Tails and Tales theme!
The summer reading program is focusing on animals (tails) and stories (tales) this year. Well, I've got plenty of both types of flannel boards that fit the bill--but I thought it would be fun to add some new songs and movement activities to the mix.
Over the remaining couple of weeks, I'll be adding new videos of these new songs to my YouTube channel. I'll also post them right here on the blog.
So, let's sing about squirrels and acorns, shall we? We'll do a little counting, a little rhyming, a little tail-swishing and pretending. Might as well tuck a bunch of early learning into one short song, right? Right. Off we go!
(to
the tune of Five Little Ducks or Over in the Meadow)
Spread
out your acorns on the board, and tell the kids we are pretending that they are
hidden underground.Have the squirrel dig and
search to find each acorn, and then she can either pile them somewhere else, or
munch them up happily 😊
Five
little acorns hidden in the ground
Along
comes a squirrel, to see what can be found.
She
swishes her tail, and she sniffs the air
And
look, she finds an acorn—right over there!
Four
little acorns hidden in the ground
Along
comes a squirrel, to see what can be found.
She
swishes her tail, and she sniffs the air
And
look, she finds an acorn—right over there!
Continue,
until….
No
little acorns hidden in the ground
Along
comes a squirrel, to see what can be found.
She
swishes her tail, and she sniffs the air
She
found all five acorns so she takes a nap right there!
Oh and hey--if you'd like to make your own squirrel set, the pattern is now available:
Time is flying! This is the fifth installment of my summer reading ideas for the Tails and Tales theme!
The summer reading program is focusing on animals (tails) and stories (tales) this year. Well, I've got plenty of both types of flannel boards that fit the bill--but I thought it would be fun to add some new songs and movement activities to the mix.
Over the next several weeks, I'll be adding new videos of these new songs to my YouTube channel. I'll also post them right here on the blog.
So, this week we're checking out my pigs. These guys have starred in this Muddy Pigs video, and of course in the Clean version, too! But since the theme is Tails, I decided to sing about their cute curly tails. I love to count, and so do kids, so we're counting up to five, and we're counting down, too! And we're rolling our hands, and sometimes we're jumping, and of course we're rhyming too. Want opposites? They're in there, too :)
And in our imaginations, we're getting nice and muddy and then we're getting nice and clean. And please, invite your kids to jump in and out of the mud, and roll their arms vigorously, so you get those little muscles working along with their spongy brains :)
Here are the videos (they are similar, but different enough from each other that I think it's very worthwhile to include both in your piggy repertoire!):
