Flannel Friday: A Crazy, Confused Christmas

So, this week I ended up writing my own Flannel Story.  I just wasn't finding much that I really wanted to 'flannelize' for a holiday story time, so I made up my own.  It is just a silly story - kind of Dumb Bunnies-ish - about a family that has a little trouble decorating the Christmas tree.

Feel free to change the script to fit your needs.  I am not for memorizing stories.  I find that it is just too hard to memorize a script word for word.  If you mess up any word you get lost, tongue-tied, blank out, whatever.  My advice, and what I do, is to know the story really well and then ad-lib as you go.  This also allows you to play to the crowd, or not if they aren't going for that.  I will repeat a refrain if it is relevant, but in general I just make sure I know the story and put all the flannel pieces in the order needed to be my prompts.  Ok, end of advice, here is my story:

It is finally December and time for the Dippies to put up the tree.  Father Dippie brought it up from the basement and proudly set it up in the living room.

'Oh dear,' said Mother Dippie, 'something is not quite right.'
So, Father Dippe twisted and turned, as set the tree up again.

'Hmmm, still not quite right,' said Mother Dippie.
So, Father Dippie twisted and turned some more and...

 I forgot to take a picture of the upright, bare tree, but I'm sure you get the idea of what it should look like here ;)

 

'Just right!' said Mother Dippie.  'Now, we must decorate the tree!  Who has the ornament box?'
'I do!' said Sister Dippie.  And she quickly decorated the tree.

'Oh my,' said Mother Dippie, 'something is not quite right.'
'I'll fix it,' said Brother Dippie.  And he took off the socks and re-decorated the tree.

'Good grief!' cried Mother Dippie.  'Not your briefs, we need the fancy Christmas balls.'
'I'll get them,' said Father Dippie.  He removed the underpants and put up the balls.

'Hmmm,' said Mother Dippie, 'something is still not quite right.  Santa will want to play if he sees that tree.'
'Santa!' Brother and Sister exclaimed.  They rushed off and came back to decorate the tree once more.

'Well, said Mother Dippie, 'that does look more festive, but something is not quite right.'  The family put their heads together, searched the house, and finally finished the tree.

'It's beautiful,' the all agreed.  'But,' said Mother Dippie, 'something is still, not quite right.  The tree needs light!'  So, the Dippies, clapped, and clapped their hands.  (Clap your hands.)  Nothing happened, so the clapped some more.  (Clap again.)  Still nothing happened.  They need your help.  Clap as loudly as you can.  Clap, clap.  Then...

'Yay!!!!!' cried the Dippies.  'The perfect tree at last.'
'But you know,' said Brother Dippie, 'I like this tree best of all!'

The green tree is made from craft foam and then I used transparency sheets to lay on top of the tree.  There is a pieces of fuzzy velcro at the top of the tree and a 'sticky' pieces on the back of each transparency sheet.  I made sure that they were hidden by the tree topper.

Also, the 'final' tree has a strand of lights that light up.  I found these at Hobby Lobby, but I am sure you could find them many places.  It is meant to be a necklace and I bought them to put on t-shirts for my kids.  So. I borrowed one for story time.  If you can't find one, you could just leave off the clapping part, or have them clap at the success of the Dippies.

Can you tell that I need to do laundry at my house?  The sock tree (and probably the whole story) was actually inspired by my kids who put their socks on my Christmas tree this week.  Ironically they were Christmas socks, but they were also used socks.  The good news is that I am officially done with my MLIS coursework and I get to graduate!  YAY!!!!!!!  (I just got the e-mail from my advisor today so I am a bit giddy.)  So, now there will be more time for laundry.

If you are looking for this week's Holiday Flannel Extravaganza, you can find it at Loons and Quines.  Past Round-Ups are at SoTomorrow, or you can click the Flannel Friday button to the right to see all the posts on Pinterest.