Flannel Friday Roundup: 1.17.15

Happy Saturday, everyone! This is my first time hosting Flannel Friday and I was blown away with the amount and variety of the submissions. I'm walking away from this post with a whole new set of storytime ideas and I hope you all do too!

First up is Kathryn, from Fun with Friends at Storytime. She has a cute and colorful set of laminated balloons and includes a variety of fun songs, rhymes, books, and even a craft to go along with them. If you've ever wanted to do a birthday-themed storytime, she's pretty much already planned one for you!

Nikki from heytherelibrary posted a cute and easy cars flannel that's great for teaching storytime crowds all about their colors.

Maggie from Playing the Hits shares her "Where is (insert animal) hiding?" game. She uses a mixture of die-cuts and freehand design to create various animals as well as places for them to hide behind. This is a neat way to teach kids various concepts: vocabulary, colors, animal names/sounds, counting, etc. You could use this one with everyone from babies to preschoolers.

Miss Tara shares her awesome glow-in-the-dark storytime outline, which includes a "Five Little Firecrackers" flannel. The idea of using gift wrap bows/ribbons for the "exploded" firecrackers is genius, This one is sure to be a hit!

Jesse combines a slinky with a 3D printed model of a worm head (cool!) to create a "Herman the Worm" puppet. He also shares a more basic prototype for those of us who aren't as technically savvy. Herman the Worm makes me remember my early Girl Scout days, where this was pretty much the only song we sang. Thanks for the flashback, Jesse!

Emily from Literary Hoots shares two very seasonally-appropriate flannels using polar bears and penguins. Both are a wintery take on the popular "Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed" song. You could use either flannel with kids of all ages!

Lisa over at Thrive After Three takes us through her amazing Bear Hunt Obstacle Course! She wonderfully includes lots of photos so we can see her materials/setup. And because children's librarians love to get a lot of mileage out of our hard work, she also includes other ideas for "hunts" to use with her props.

Last (but certainly not least), Storytime Katie shares her gorgeous goldfish flannel puppets. I love not only how large they are, but that she generously includes her template!


And here are a couple of special announcements from Flannel Friday:

• Anne and Melissa, two of our founders, will be hosting the first Storytime Petting Zoo at ALA Midwinter on Saturday, January 31st at 2:00 p.m. It will be in the Networking Uncommons right after Guerilla Storytime. Anyone who's planning on attending is encouraged to bring a flannel to share if they like. I'll be there!

• The help celebrate Flannel Friday's 4th birthday, they have something fun planned for the week of March 4th: their first Guest-Post Palooza! If you've always wanted to participate in a Flannel Friday, but don't have a blog of your own, here's your chance! They are looking for people who would like to post about their flannels as well as bloggers who are willing to host. Check out Mollie's post about it for more information and to sign up.

For more information about Flannel Friday, check out their official blog, Pinterest page, Facebook group, or follow #flannelfriday on Twitter.

Happy flanneling!