Flannel Friday: Little Lightning Bugs

Our story time theme this week was Night Creatures and I am not sure if there is a night creature more loved (at least by children around here) than lightning bugs (or fireflies, we used the word interchangeably).  Right now we are in the prime of lightning bug season.  They come out around 8 o'clock and flash their little lights all over.

So, for a night creature theme I knew I had to include lightning bugs.  I was inspired by 2 other Flannel Friday posts this week.  One was Miss Alison at MiSS ALiSSON iS BLOGGiNG.  It was almost a year ago that she posted her Five Little Fireflies with disappearing lights that I thought was so cool.  Although, I was wary of pulling lights out of the little pockets she made, so I made my bugs reversible.  I was also inspired by Amy at catch the possibilites who posted her version of Ten Flashing Fireflies by Philemon Sturges. 

My plan was to use both of these flannels toward the end of my story time, but other activities ran a little longer so I only used one.  I went with Miss Alison's Five fireflies because that involves loud sneezing which is often a hit in story time.  The rhyme went:

Five little firflies flashing in the night.
Looking at the glow of each other's light.
Then whoosh went the wind whistle went the breeze,
And out went one light with a great big sneeze...
AAAACCCCHHHHOOOOO!!!!

The repeat with 4,3,2 and finish with

One lonely firefly flashing in the night.
He couldn't see the glow of the others' lights.
Then whoosh went the wind and whistle went the breeze,
And out went his light with a great big sneeze...
AAAACCCCHHHHOOOOO!!!!

The kids really enjoyed this one.  Many of them were saying the rhyme with me by the end.  I had to get a little tricky with my craft foam so that I could flip them over.  I realized that a little bit of black velcro did the trick and blended nicely with the lightning bugs' wings.  I did have ten fireflies made up to do both rhymes.  My plan was that I would change the Ten Flashing Frieflies to Five Flashing Fireflies so I set my board (which has felt on both sides) so that both flannels were ready to go.  Then, when I only needed one I did not have to move anything around.

Here is the side of the board we did not use.

 You can find this week's round-up with Andrea at rovingfiddlehead kidlit, all posts on Pinterest by clicking the Flannel Friday button to the right, or see all things Flannel Friday at the Flannel Friday blog!

Flannel Friday: 5 Hungry Ants

Since I still have food on the brain after yesterday's feasting, I give you one of my favorite food related flannel stories: 5 Hungry Ants.  I think that I first came across this several years ago on a PUBYAC post, but I have seen it many different places.  The rhyme goes:
5 hungry ants, marching in a line
Came across a picnic where they thought that they could dine.
They marched into the salad,
They marched into the cake,
They marched into the pepper, uh-oh, that was a mistake.
Aaah-Aaah-Aaah-Choooo!

And of course the Aaah-chooing is very exaggerated and I throw one of the ants off of the board.  The kids and parents love this one.  I think I did it every week a few summers ago when the Summer Reading theme was bugs.  I thought that they would get sick of it but every time I pulled them out I could hear excited murmurs.

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Flannel Friday: Five Butterflies

Since in this week's story time I used the flannel story There's a Bug on the Teacher that Miss Mary Liberry had previously posted to Flannel Friday, I am going to show you my 'magical butterflies.'  This flannel works kind of the opposite of the melting snowmen that I posted a few weeks ago.  In this, the butterflies 'pop' out of cocoons to flutter around.  Here is the rhyme that I made to go with it:

5 butterflies spun cocoons, Spin your hands like 'the wheels on the bus'
Hoping Spring would be here soon. Cross your fingers
With a little bit of magic, Wiggle fingers in the air
And some warm sunshine, Arms over head for the sun
Clap, clap, clap for a butterfly!  I make the kids really clap to get the butterfly to pop out

 This one wasn't too hard to make.  You need to get some cardboard and cover it with whatever background that you want.  Then, make 5 pockets for your cocoons.  Glue some caterpillars onto the cocoons and then glue them onto the board.

Next, make some butterflies.  I cut mine out of felt and wrapped pipe cleaners around the middle leaving the tops curled like antenna.

Glue 2 pieces of yarn onto the butterfly (I cover the yarn with another small felt scrap).  Make sure that you place the yarn at the top of the wings.

Then poke holes at the top of the board and push the yarn through.  This is the trickiest part because you want the two pieces of yarn to be spaced apart so that when you pull the butterfly up the wings open.  The best way to do this is lay the butterfly so that the middle of its body is in the middle of the cocoon and stretch the yarn up to see where it goes.  Some of the yarns may cross, so make sure that you pull the butterfly with the top yarn first.

When the yarn is pushed through the holes tie the two together so that you can easily pull them at the same time.  Then I covered the holes with some fiber fill to cover them up.

Shoo Fly!

I never thought that a story time about Flies could be quite so much fun!  The inspiration for this theme was the NYPL list book Old Black Fly.  I really am not a fan of flies (not sure that anyone is) but it turns out that in books they can be (almost) endearing.  For the fly theme, our letter of the week was F.  This was another tough one for the kids.  None of them had names with the letter F, but we did come up with the word frog - and you know what frogs like to eat!

The first book we read was Old Black Fly by Jim Aylesworth.  This book was great for story time.  I had all of the kids (and adults) chant 'shoo fly, shoo fly, shoo' with me when it appeared in the story.  This really helped to keep the kids involved and avoided the adult side conversations.  I think the end of the story is funny (there is a swat - here you can clap or slap your leg for a nice sound effect - and then the fly is 'done buzzin around) and you can either assume the fly is dead or got away :)  (For the 2's and 3's I tell them he flew away scared.)

Our second little book was Michael Rosen's The Tiny Little Fly.  This is a great new book.  I love the large illustrations that are great for story time sharing.  I also like the repetitive text and the story itself is just the right length for the 2 year old crowd.  You could have the kids repeat 'I'm gonna catch that fly' but I had already done that with the first book. 

For the last story I went with a flannel board this week since the kids have seemed to be getting wiggly by the end of our sessions.  I found the rhyme There's a Bug on the Teacher by Kalli Dakos on Miss Mary Liberry's blog.  So, I made my own version and changed the poem to say fly instead of bug.  (I made 'foamie' me!)  This is a short poem and the fly works his way from the teacher's foot to her nose where she sneezes him away.  I had all of the kids pretend that their pointer finger was a fly and they did the rhyme along with me.  You can find the text on Miss Mary's blog by clicking on the link above.

Since flies and bugs go hand in hand, we sang Hap Palmer's Itsy Bitsy Spider.  This song is always a favorite of mine because I love the part where the spider climbs on the kids.  It is good for learning body awareness of just good old tickle fun with whoever brought them.

Of course we couldn't do a fly theme without singing Shoo Fly, and Greg and Steve have a good version on their album On the Move.  This version has the kids acting like other animals in between each round of the Shoo Fly verse.  Thankfully my coworker knew this one, because the version I had did not have as much action and I try to keep my songs really active.

We ended story time by dancing with scarves to Johnette Downing's Shake Your Scarves.  This is a good scarf song where the kids move them up and down and in and out etc.

Our craft was simply a fly on a stick and a paper person.  They each got a black fly (an Ellison bumble bee that I modified by cutting off the antenna and stinger) and a piece of paper with the outline of a person.  They decorated each with crayons and stickers and then had a fly that could land on the person's head, toes, tummy, nose, etc.