Queen Elsa's Crowns

This past week at story time we had a royalty theme.  While looking for a good flannel story to go along with my books I came across an idea for using different colored crowns at Story Time Secrets.  I figured that could be an easy flannel story, have a princess who keeps changing her crown and we could sing to the tune of Mary wore her red dress.  Then, when looking for a princess clip art to use as a guide for my flannel I saw a picture of Queen Elsa and decided to go with that.  Thus 'Queen Elsa's Crowns:'

Queen Elsa wears her BLUE crown, BLUE crown, BLUE crown
Queen Elsa wears her BLUE crown every MONDAY.

I put up the picture of Elsa and had 7 crown options, each a different color (one was many colors and we called it rainbow).  Then, we went through the days of the week and at the start of each new verse I would ask the kids which day came next.  Sometimes we had to start at the beginning, but that helped them both remember and learn.  I also took suggestions for the crown color.  (There were a few little girls who took this responsibility very seriously.)

Of course they LOVED this.  Even the boys were into it - mostly for shouting out the days of the week - and they all were singing along.

Normally I prefer to make my flannels, but I do have to admit using clip art and a laminator made it super easy.  I may have to try a flannel  Elsa though, that would be a fun challenge!

Checkout this week's Flannel Friday round-up at What is Bridget Reading? or visit the Flannel Friday blog for more information including how to participate.  You can also visit the Pinterest page (click the button on your right) for ALL Flannel Friday postings arranged on rather helpful boards.

Flannel Pizza Friday

Friday seems to be a rather popular pizza day, so I feel that it is appropriate to share the flannel pizzas that I used in story time this past week for Flannel (Pizza) Friday.  You can read about the books and songs we used for pizza week here, below are the flanneled parts.

Whilen looking for a flannel story or activity for our pizza theme I came across this fun song posted by Jen in the Library.  It is a pizza song much like Bingo and goes:
There is a treat that's fun to eat 
And Pizza is it's name-o.
P-I-Z-Z-A, P-I-Z-Z-A, P-I-Z-Z-A
And Pizza is it's name-o.

Then, because it looks so yummy, we ate one.  The kids LOVED this.  I held out the flannel slice and we all happily pretend chewed it up.  We went back to the song and replaced the P with a clap and then ate another slice and so on until we had eaten all of the pizza.

When I sang the song with my toddler group we kept saying Pizza, even if the letters said IZZA or ZA etc.  I could not remember how the Bingo song goes (this is what happens when you start to get older and accumulate too many children's songs in your head - just wait until you forget the tune to Twinkle little star!).  I think I have heard Bingo sung both ways, so we just kept going with the full word.  And, if you just go with it like your way is right everyone will follow along and figure maybe they had it wrong :) (Until a 3 year old informs you of your error, I had one in tears over Little Bunny Foo-Foo once and I sang that one 'correctly'.)

The pizza slices are made of flannel and decorated with various toppings.  I made each one with different toppings just for fun.  I did color the white flannel with yellow and brown sharpies to get a better looking 'cheese' layer.  The letters are paper that was laminated with a velcro piece on the back.  I figured this way I could take them off if I ever needed pizza slices for another story.

For play time after story time I wanted to incorporate the pizza theme so I made up some flannel pizzas.  There is crust, sauce, cheese (cut yarn), and various toppings.  I saved a few pizza boxes over the weekend and lined them with some cardstock and let the kids use those to serve and deliver their pizza creations.  They had a great time with it.

You can find the rest of this week's Flannel Friday submissions over at storytime katie and for the best ever collection of flannel ideas check out the Pinterest boards.

Sing a song in Story Time

This past week our story time theme was books that you can sing.  This theme is always fun because there are a lot of great books that can be sung.  And, you tend to get lots of audience participation when you pick songs that are well known by your toddler crowd.

Our letter of the day was S for Sing.  Many of the kids knew the letter S and were able to tell me the sound that it makes.  They had a little more trouble coming up with words that started with an S, but they had a few that started with the letter C, so that was close.

The first book that was sang was If you're happy and you know it by Jane Cabrera.  This is a fun one since the kids know the song but it adds lots of extra motions like flapping your wings, nodding your head, or turning around that get the kids up and moving.  And, Jane's illustrations are always nice and bright making them easily visible for story time.

Our second sung book was Lenny Hort's The Seals on the bus.  This is another familiar tune with the toddler crowd, so many of them sang along.  Though, in Hort's version there are many animals on the bus who make different noises.  To get the kids more involved I would ask them if they knew which animal was on the bus and what sound they made.  And, I really like the ending of this book when the skunks get on the bus...

This was our last story time for the fall session and though Thanksgiving is most of the month away I thought we could throw in the Turkey song.  I actually did this one last year, but that was at a different library and even still it is a fun one.  You can read about how I made the turkey here and watch the video to get the song lyrics.  The song is about colors of the turkey feathers, so it is good for the little kids.  I did modify it this time around and put the turkey on a paint stirrer stick.  I used velcro to stick the turkey on the front and added another piece of velcro to the back to put the feathers on.  This made changing the feathers easier since I did not need to pull the turkey all the way off of the flannel board to add new feathers.

We sang Carole Peterson's version of the song Shoo Fly.  In this one there are animal actions in between each verse so the kids are up and acting like alligators, birds, etc.  I have also done this in the past with scarves that the kids wave around to 'shoo' the fly.

We got out our shaker eggs for another Carole Peterson song and did the Shaker Hop.  This is a fun song to the tune of the Bunny Hop where the kids are putting the shakers in and out and then hopping around.

It was Carole Peterson day as we threw in the song Tommy Thumb is up.  This is a great finger play song that I use quite a bit to transition from a movement activity to a book.  It is kind of like Where is thumbkin, but you only use the thumb, pointer, pinkie, and then all of the fingers (skipping the 'bad' one and the hard one!)  And we ended with her song B-Bananas.  We have done this song every week of the session at the end of story time and the kids have really enjoyed it.

Our craft was a kazoo.  This was a very simple one.  Each kid got a toilet paper roll and a piece of white paper that was cut to fit around the roll.  They decorated the paper with markers and paint stampers then taped it to the roll.  Then, they used a rubber band to cover one end of the roll with wax paper.  When they sang or talked into the roll it made a funny sound.