Flannel Friday: Red Wagon Song

Now that I am doing Babytime I have been trying to work flannels into my programs.  I feel like I really have to make it worth my time as before I was doing 4 storytimes (all the same) each week and now I am down to 2 babytimes and some of those flannel boards take some time.  Anyway... I found a way to re-work one I had dome before for the babies.

Little Red Wagon, or Bumping up and Down is probably a standard lapsit song.  I have a transportation theme this week so I decided to add a few more verses with a few different vehicles.  The traditional song goes:

Bumping up and down in my little red wagon.
Bumping up and down in my little red wagon.
Bumping up and down in my little red wagon,
Won't you be my darling.

I think Raffi has a version of it that I have used before, but this week we are just going to sing it.  The babies will bounce up and down for the first three lines and then get a hug on the fourth.

But...

What if we are bumping up and down in a big BLUE truck?  Or in a big ORANGE dump truck?  Or a YELLOW school bus or a GREEN train?

I plan to use this with the babies, but I think that it would work for the older kids too.  They would enjoy calling out the colors and type of vehicle and could 'bounce' themselves as they sang.

I made a similar flannel board last spring to go with a transportation theme.  You can read about it here.  I had to leave that set behind when I moved jobs, but the new one can be used in the same way.  (Luckily I had saved a file with all the clip art images I had used for the shapes.)  I will eventually make a few more of the pieces, but I figured for a babytime song we only needed a few.  Then, for a future story time, we can have Blue truck, blue truck, what do you see?  I love multipurpose flannel boards...

You can find this week's round-up with Anne at sotomorrow.  All flannel boards eventually get pinned to the Pinterest page, and all things Flannel Friday related can be found at the blog.

Mushy Gushy Valentine Round-Up

Thanks to everyone who contributed to this week's Valentine themed round-up.  There are some great Valentine flannel boards as well as non-Valentine submissions.

I have to admit, there was so much 'cuteness' going on this week  that I had to pull up a thesaurus to try and avoid repeating the words 'cute' and 'adorable' along with every entry.  Admittedly the same words are still repeated a lot (a big pet peeve of mine thanks to a wonderful high school English teacher), but I had a hard time using a word like delectable for flannel, makes it sound like I want to eat them.  Although, we do have some flannel eating going on this week so perhaps that would have been appropriate.

Anyway, here is our Mushy-Gushy Round-Up for 2013, complete with mushy and many great non-mushy flannelboards.  They are color coded based on if they are Valentiney or not.  Shades of red are Valentine themed and shades of blue are not.  And there is one purple that is based on a non-Valentine book but could fit great into a Valentine theme.  Enjoy!

Amy from catch the possibilities features her sparkly version of Five little snowflakes and also shares some tips for making the task of cutting out those intricate flakes less daunting.

Andrea at librarianvsstorytime has a very cute Valentine game based off of Sara Weeks' book Be mine, be mine, sweet Valentine.

Anna of Future Librarian Superhero shares with us how she uses her adorable monster puppet Fergus in storytime.  I have to agree with Anna's post, puppets eating things during storytime is HIGHLY entertaining.

Anne at sotomorrow features a fun Circus Elephant cut and tell rhyme.  Not mushy, but you could argue that the elephants are kissing...

Jane and Piper from Piper Loves the Library are sorting their laundry with Valentine mittens!  Jane has also revamped Library Quine's currant buns to dress them up for Valentine's day.

Jen in the library brings us Vincent's Valentine Animals.  This funny story has got to be a hit, how can it not be with animals exchanging heads and mixing up their noises?

Kay at Storytime ABC's is bringing the cold to Florida with her darling Polar Friends.

Lena of sixcranberries felted some charming Finger Puppet Crows to go along with a wintry rhyme that she adapted from the song Three Craws.

Library Quine at Loons and Quines @ Librarytime has a darling Little Green Bug that is helping her share rhyming words in the library.  LQ also shows us her new (possibly faster) method of adding amazing detail to her flannels.

Linda of Notes from the Story Room shows us how to share the story Karen's Valentine's day surprise as either a draw and tell or a flannelboard story.

Lisa from Libraryland shares her version of the rhyme Valentine Race, complete with sparkly heart Valentines.

Lucy at In the Children's Room made her own version of a Valentine tree along with a super cute (and easy!) craft to go along with it.

Madigan from Madigan Reads shows us her adorable Owl Feltboard.  She uses some textured flannel that adds that extra something to some already charming owls.

Mel of Mel's Desk is skipping Valentine's Day all together and heading all the way on into fall.  That's right folks, this lady is really planning ahead with her impressive fall flannel pieces to accompany Lindsay Barrett George's book That pup!

Miss Kristine joins us this week via Loons and Quines (welcome Miss Kristine!) where she shares her delightful hand holding Octopi.

Mrs Shaia at Thrive After Three shares a very cute flannelization of the story Tuck me in.  Each of the adorable animals have a matching blankie, so cute!

Sandy from Storytime Sparks brings us the rhyme Five in the truck as well as several other ideas for a truck themed storytime.  Sandy claims that her flannelboard is not Valentiney but, I have had many storytime friends for whom Trucks = Love.

Sharon of Rain Makes Applesauce shares her fun version of the perfect Valentine story, Matt Novak's My froggy Valentine.

Tara over at Storytime with Miss Tara and friends is Blowing Kisses on her flannelboard  and then out to her storytime friends.  What a wonderful idea to include the audience and kids LOVE stickers!


Hopefully this will provide some inspiration for all of your upcoming storytimes, Valentine's or not.  Be sure to check the Pinterest Page for all of these as well as past submissions wonderfully organized by a wide variety of themes.  For all other Flannel Friday stuff, check the blog.

Next week's host is Anne at sotomorrow.

Also, keep in mind that there are two more extravaganzas coming up, the Dig in to Reading (SRP theme for many of us in the states - bugs and dirt) will be on March 1 and the Flannel Friday Birthday Extravaganza will be on March 15.

That's it for this week, until next week - Happy Flannelling!

Mushy-gushy Round-up for 1.25.13

This week we are kicking off the season of love - flannel style.  So, if you have one, please share a Valentine themed flannel board.  If you do not have one, please feel free to share any other flannel board that you love.  (That would make a good Valentine theme story time - 'Stories I love...')  Don't worry if you aren't going along with our theme, we are equal opportunity idea stealers!

Changes in Story Time Land

It has been a little while since my last post and that is due to changes that have taken place in my work life.  Previously I was working as a library assistant at an independent library where I usually did toddler and family story times.  Each week I would try to blog about our story time (books, songs, crafts, etc) as well as contribute to Flannel Friday by posting a flannel story.

However, to start the new year I landed a new job as an Early Childhood Librarian at a bigger library system where I am now mostly doing Baby time.  (I have a job-share position and my partner does the toddler/preschool story times, don't worry, we are not neglecting that crowd).  Eventually I will be doing preschool outreach so I can blog about those, but until then I may not be blogging as often.  Baby time tends to be rather repetitive - this is good for the babies, not so much for blogging.

In the transition I did have to leave all of my wonderful flannel boards behind, so I hope to begin to rebuild that collection (there were over 50).  So, hopefully I will be able to write about that, or just come up with new flannels to share.

For now, I am settling into the new position and trying to figure out how to spice up the Baby times.  (Babies may do well with repetition but Miss Sarah does not.)  I am hoping to find some good rhymes to 'flannelize.'  I enjoy flannel projects, but I plan to do them for Baby time only if we can use them a lot.  I've got some ideas, so hang tight, I can't stay away from my flannels (or craft foam) for long.