Flannel Board Fun

Little Bo Peep Hide & Seek: A Little Mouse Variation

I love using one felt board set to accomplish many things.

In this case, it's my Hey Diddle Diddle set, which I've written about before right here.

Nursery rhymes are wonderful ways to build early literacy skills like rhyming and vocabulary. Plus, they're comforting in their familiarity and they're often a little bit silly. Silly means fun, and fun means kids are engaged. Winning.

In that post, I mentioned my little laminated Bo Peep.

Hiding her behind one of the felt characters and trying to find her while chanting a wee rhyme is such a fun way to get the kids involved.

And now I've got a video of this activity!

So much easier to just show you how it works instead of trying to explain it! But in case you need to copy and print the chant, here it is:

Bo Peep, Bo Peep, playing hide and seek...

Are you behind the orange cat?

Let's take a peek!

Bo Peep has lost her sheep, and we've lost HER somewhere!

Is she behind the brown fiddle? Let's look under there!

Down at The Bus Stop (video!)

Need a fun song using animals and a bus? Well, here you go! (I used my Hickory Dickory Dock set for this one. You can see my other post about it right here.)

This bus and animal version of Down by the Station is counting and animal vocabulary fun. Plus there's naming of movements and speeds and other fun early math and literacy stuff tucked in there--your toddler and preschool kids will love this one.

And you could of course invite them to perform the movements of the animals with their hands or with their whole bodies...

Click the picture below to watch the video :)

Want some books to go along with this song? How about some of these...

The Bus for Us by Suzanne Bloom

Down by the Station by Will Hillenbrand

School Bus by Donald Crews

Toot Toot Beep Beep by Emma Garcia

Hey Diddle Diddle Remix--Video!

You may have read about my Hey Diddle Diddle set before--I wrote about it here. But I didn't have a video using the set until right this very minute :) So...here it is! Classic Nursery Rhyme fun--but with a twist!

Let's get all mixed up (click the picture to watch the video!)

Fruit Song for Kids: Fruit Salad Ballad!

I can't have a felt board set that can only be used one way, now can I?? No, I can't!

My Rainbow Stew set is definitely a favorite with kids and educators. It's magical, for sure. I've got a video of that fun song right here.

But of course I needed to write another song for it. A fruity song. A song that includes colors and rhyming and pretending...

So I did. And I called it Fruit Salad Ballad. Because I think that's so darn cute.

Here's the video--I hope you love it and use it with your kids as soon as possible :) There will be picking, and plucking, and chopping and tossing and eating! Get ready for fruity fun!

Oh! And now you can also get a pattern and make your own set! Click below :)

Hickory Dickory Dock--Ocean Style!

Hickory Dickory Dock, the fish swam up the clock! Here's a fun way to combine an old classic nursery rhyme with ocean critters.

You can see my Hickory Dickory post here, set for sale here, and original video here. My Ocean Set post is here, the felt set for sale is here, and there are a bunch of Ocean videos here.

The Wheels on the Bus--Ocean Style!

Are you a tiny bit tired of the Wheels on the Bus? But the kids looovee it? And do you have an ocean felt board set that you need to put to good use?!

I've got you covered :) This one is simple to learn and the kids will love it--and they'll be able to join in because they already know the tune!

Stay seated and get those little finger muscles stronger if you do this as a finger play. Or stand up and swim around to build balance and large muscle strength. Either way, vocabulary and creative skills are off the charts :)

Here you go--enjoy:

Somebody's Moving in the Sea (an Ocean Song for Kids)!

When I was teaching preschool, we used to use this tune to welcome the kids to circle time. "Somebody's knocking at my door--oh, Suzie, I hear you knocking..." It's actually an old hymn, but we went a little lighter with it ;)

I thought this tune would work perfectly with my ocean set. I think I was right :) I certainly had fun making this video and performing all the movements.

It would absolutely be super fun to make this a standing up movement activity! Do it!!

Ocean Friend Count Up

I wrote this song to go along with my Five Ocean Critters set last year, but only now got around to making a video for it! I had a lot of fun with this one!

This ocean song is just a wee bit tricky in the math department, probably most understandable to older preschool kids. You'll see what I mean when you watch the video.

But it's SO fun for all the little ones: we get to do diving and splashing and all kinds of fishy movements!

And as usual, I've made it easy to learn and join in on by using a familiar tune--this time, it's the Five Little Ducks tune.

Take a look right here:

Hope you like that one! And I hope it makes any ocean, beach, or fishy themed circle time that much easier to plan for :)

Did You Ever See a Lassie (Ocean Version!)

Whether you're prepping for your Ocean's of Possibilities Summer Reading Program, or you just like oceans critters as much as I do, or you like singing songs about ocean animals with small children--or any combination of the above... This one's for you :)

As always, I'm on a mission to come up with as many way as possible to use each felt set in my collection. My ocean set already has a bunch of songs to use with it (here's a whole playlist!), but I wanted more!

Enter Did You Ever See a Lassie, Ocean Version. I love this one because you can do it sitting down as a finger play, or you can get up and move! It teaches ocean vocabulary--and you can totally switch it up and let the kids come up with the movement words, too. Plus, you most likely already know the tune, so it's suuuper easy to learn this one.

Anyway, enough talk! Here's the video--enjoy :)

If you like singing and rhyming and generally having fun with kids,

I think you'll love these songs strips:

Ramadan Storytime Set

Next month is Ramadan, and I don't have a Ramadan set! Strike that--I DIDN'T have a Ramadan set. But now I do :)

Like my Kwanzaa and Diwali sets, I had to do quite a bit of research for this set--because I don't personally celebrate Ramadan. Here's what I wrote about those holidays, and it applies here, too:

I thought it would be fun to create some holiday sets for holidays that I don't personally celebrate. (I was right--it WAS fun, and wow, I learned a lot while doing research for these sets.) I'm so happy to be able to share these, as I think it's so important to expose kids to various cultures, and to share in celebrations with the kids who DO celebrate holidays outside of my own experience :)

I focus holiday sets on the parts of holidays that kids understand, so the concepts are about simple traditions vs. religious themes.

I also want them to be usable both as storytime sets-- where the adult is using the set pieces as props to support a rhyme, song or story--and as play sets for the kids--where the kids are re-enacting traditions, songs, and stories that they've learned about.

Here's one of the rhymes I've written to go along with this set:

Place your felt pieces on the board s you sing about them and use the pieces to act out the words as you sing them.