so tomorrow

I know Groundhog Day is months away, but here is a great story for it or even just a shadows theme: Gregory Groundhog Looks for His Shadow. Words and patterns are from Magnet Board Fun by Liz Wilmes, but I would not suggest doing this story on the magnet board. I think it's a lot easier to tell on the flannel board as you can make the pieces reversible instead of having two sets of animals.

It's a simple story. Gregory has lost his shadow and goes into the woods to find it. He sees lots of shadows, but they turn out be for different animals (bear, deer, frog, etc.). This part is fun for the kids because they see the shadowy outline and can try and guess what the animal is.



Spoiler alert! Eventually Gregory finds his shadow and they are reunited.  Can you see his shadow?


This week's Flannel Friday is being hosted by Katie (@sharingsoda on Twitter) of Storytime Secrets. I hope everyone in the U.S. had a Happy Turkey Day yesterday! Don't forget that next week (December 2…

I stumbled upon a newspaper clipping that I thought some of us would find interesting. It is called "Unruly Students Given Warning at [City] Public Library" and covers the problems (noise, theft, playing radios, smoking) that can be associated with groups of teens in a library setting. Apparently, it was so bad that the mayor himself came over to warn the "unruly students" that "drastic action" up to and including closing the library could be taken if the situation continued. The police had even been visiting regularly in the evenings to keep an eye on the situation, to no avail.


Sound familiar? I found it interesting that the article was published on October 17, 1962, which means that the teenagers in question are now my parents' age (actually older). I had a mental image of a preteen version of my Mom and Dad smoking in the library and frankly that is hilarious. I searched the Google archives of our local paper and didn't see a follow-up. So, ch…

It can be so hard to put together a program for school age kids that they will actually show up for! I was thrilled today when we hosted our first sewing camp. I got the idea from the wonderful book (and blog) Sewing School, which I was introduced to by my friend Anne at Canton Public Library. Side note: has anyone noticed how many librarians are named Anne? It is almost as crazy as all the Katies.

We did registration (capped at 15 & we filled it easily but a couple kids didn't show, so we had 10 total, including 2 boys) and limited it to kids over 7. I decided on 7 because I wanted them to not be so young that they would get bored or frustrated if they struggled. We picked a gender neutral project (felt pincushions). We provided all the supplies: templates, embroidery floss, needles, pins, felt, stuffing, and fabric scissors. We also copied instructions for all the kids so they could bring them home.

We wanted to start with a simple project because we had no idea what kind o…

Today for Flannel Friday, I'm sharing my version of the folktale known as "Two of Everything." I used Diane Briggs's patterns from 52 Programs for Preschoolers, which is also the source of the words. I was able to get this book through ILL and I do not have a copy of the patterns, but Amazon has several used copies starting at $0.01.

Essentially the story goes like this... Husband finds mysterious pot buried in his yard. He digs it out and drags out. He has a little trouble carrying the pot comfortably while also hanging on to his one gold coin, so he puts the coin in the pot. When he goes to retrieve the coin, to his surprise there are now two coins.

He and his wife get a little greedy duplicating their belongings and things are going swimmingly... until the wife trips and falls into the pot! Not wanting two wives of his own, the husband panics... and then trips and falls into the pot himself.
 The new couple builds a house next door and they all live happily ever …

I've been participating in Flannel Friday for over 6 months now, and it has reinvigorated my love of storytelling to children. I love being able to share my ideas and get to see others' too. You may have noticed, dear readers, that often my flannels are made (or at the least inspired by) from patterns in professional resource books like Storytime Magic. I would never have discovered most of these wonderful planning books without being able to borrow them through our statewide ILL system, MeLCat. 

I am so grateful to my colleagues around the state who allow these resources to be loaned to librarians like myself. I hope that by writing this I can encourage some libraries whose collections are In Library Use or Staff Only to rethink this position. Yes, these books are expensive and it is handy for them to always be at our fingertips, instead of being lost or damaged out in the wild.  But they are invaluable to working professionals in libraries, child care facilities, schools, an…

Here is a very simple flannelboard called "Snowball Friends," (by Liz and Dick Wilmes, in their 2's Experience: Feltboard Fun book)  which I have used for a winter toddler storytime. Very simply, a few snowballs are friends and they decide to roll down a hill one at a time. At the bottom, they climb onto each other's shoulders and make a snowman. The best part is rolling the snowballs down the hill on the board. At the same time, you can have the kids "roll" their fists and chant "roll, roll, roll, roll!"

This week's Flannel Friday is being hosted by Sharon (@ReadingChick). Don't forget that I recently made an announcement about Flannel Friday and the holidays, read that here.

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**In case you missed yesterday's announcement about Flannel Friday's plans for a holiday extravaganza and a holiday break, please make sure you read that post, as well. 


Also, I don't think anyone has ever mentioned this before, but we tend to use blogger's first names when compiling the roundup, so it is super helpful if you have your first name (or a pseudonym like Loons and Quines) that we can refer to you by. Otherwise, by default, if you make cute flannelboards, I'm probably going to think that your name is Katie. I am just speaking for myself here, but if your name isn't Katie (lovely name that it is), maybe you don't want to get credit as a Katie. I would also suggest having an About page with contact info (Twitter account and/or email address, etc.), in case the host has any questions or needs to get in touch.  **


On to the roundup!


Alison shares How Grandmother Spider Stole the Sun, originally a story necklace (such a neat presentation idea). 

Angela d…

It's almost Thanksgiving time here in the U.S. and it has always been one of my favorite holidays. Mostly because it is all about delicious food and family. I love any holiday that has mashed potatoes AND stuffing. Yummy carbs!

For today's Flannel Friday, I'm sharing a fun group activity called "Turkey Feathers." Each child gets a feather and then as you sing about the different colors of feathers, the kids who have that color will come up and put their feather on the board.

Turkey Feathers
(Sing to the tune of "Frere Jacques"/"Are You Sleeping") 
Turkey feathers, turkey feathers.
Brightly colored, brightly colored.
If you have a blue feather,
Add it now! 

I originally found a turkey with a bunch of feathers in the files here when I started and there was no activity to go with them, so I was happy when I stumbled upon this one. That said, I have no idea where this turkey's pattern came from. I would use a coloring page as a template if I wanted…