Flannel Board Story Ideas

Dinosaur Eggs

• Kids love dinosaurs. You can combine an easy science lesson with counting using colorful dinosaur eggs. The science part is teaching children how dinosaurs, like birds, laid eggs and then protected them until they hatched. Make a mom dinosaur and a dad dinosaur out of felt and a big felt dinosaur nest to fit on the bottom of the felt board. Make ten dinosaur eggs, half of them unhatched and the other half with baby dinosaurs peeking out. An easy way to do this is to just draw a big, open crack on the egg with two little eyes peaking out. Put a mixture of hatched and unhatched dinosaur eggs in the nest and let the kids count how many of each there are. As an alternative, let the kids design their own eggs and put them in the nest. Let them decide if their egg will be a hatched one or not. When everyone has their egg in the nest, everyone can count how many hatched and unhatched eggs there are. To take the game even further, make little dinosaurs that have already hatched to put on the board.

Head of the School

• Make a bright blue flannel board to use as an aquarium. Cut out felt bits of seaweed, maybe a pirate's chest and some rocks to go on the bottom of the board. Cut out different colors and shapes and sizes of fish. Make some spectacles out of black felt. Explain that the fish with the spectacles is the teacher of the school of fish. This can lead to a science lesson about how some fish travel in schools. Have all the children cover their eyes. Hide all the fish behind the seaweed, rocks and other aquarium pieces. Parts of the fish will be visible. Put the spectacles on one of the fish before you hide it. Make sure the spectacles can't be seen. Have one person at a time come up and try and find the teacher fish by pulling a fish off the flannel board. The one that finds the teacher fish gets to choose the teacher fish and hide the school of fish for the next game.

Pussycat Hide and Seek

• Create a flannel board that looks like the inside of a barn. Make felt pieces of things you might find in a barn, such as yellow stacks of hay, milk pails, old boxes, feed bags, maybe even an old tractor. Make a mama cat and several kittens. Ten is a good number. Make them all different colors and put numbers on each one. Now tell the story that mama cat had all these kittens and they are wandering around and she can't seem to find them. Hide the kittens in different parts of the barn and then let the children find them and put them next to the mama cat. Or divide the class into two groups and let one group hide the kittens and the other find them. As the kittens are found, have the children tell you which number kitten they have. When the kitten is put next to the mama cat, ask how many kittens mama cat has back. This story teaches numbers, counting and how to solve puzzles.