Basically, the story is this. Lisa is ready for bed:

Lisa’s mom tells her to go to sleep. But she can’t, Lisa says, without her doll! She gets doll, puts it in bed. Mom again asks her to go to bed, but Lisa says the doll can’t sleep without the rabbit.  This continues – mom telling Lisa to go to bed and Lisa needing one more thing – until the bed looks like this:

Finally Lisa says she can’t sleep because there’s no room for her in the bed (I let the kids guess this part). She chooses one item, her doll, and finally goes to bed.

Here are all the items I made (not all of them appear in the book). I freehanded everything, and it shows a bit, I think. The bed is a graphic made in MS Word, then attached to manila folder and covered in contact paper. I added a felt bedspread to give it some shape and texture.

There it is! Enjoy! And doesn’t Lisa have lovely slippers?

The lovely Anne over at So Tomorrow (one of the original Flannel Friday-ers) is hosting today’s round-up. Or click the “Flannel Friday” link to the right to see all the flannels of the past (sounds ghostly…ooooohhh!) organized in visual form on Pinterest.

• Waddell, Martin. The Super Hungry Dinosaur.  I love this book – especially for Hal’s bravery when defending his family and how he makes the dinosaur apologize.
• Yolen, Jane. How Do Dinosaurs Eat Their Food.  All these dino books are favorites of the kids. Even if they won’t admit that YES, sometimes, they DO bubble their milk. But NEVER stick beans up their noses.
• Shea, Bob. Dinosaur vs. Bedtime. ROOAAARR! Dinosaur wins! Except when it comes to bedtime. Bedtime ALWAYS wins.

Have you figured out what these books have in common? I mean, besides DINOSAURS, obviously. It is…..

Spaghetti. Yes, spaghetti. In The Super Hungry Dinosaur, after Hal makes the dino apologize and clean up, he declares he’s still hungry. So Hal’s mom makes him a Super Hungry Dinosaur Dinner, which happens to be spaghetti and meatballs. In How Do Dinosaurs Eat Their Food we are asked if a dino would “flip his spaghetti high into the air?” And finally, in Dinosaur vs. Bedtime, the dino goes up against a bowl of spaghetti. Who will win? Dinosaur, OF COURSE.

*SLURP*

So. About this week’s Flannel Friday. There isn’t one. Again. Sorry. Work has been just too busy to work on new ideas, and I’ve run out of already made flannels to use. But I DO have one half done, and REALLY REALLY hope to get it posted next week.

But for those of you who haven’t been on the Flannel Friday bandwagon since the beginning and may not have seen it, here is the FIRST Flannel Friday post I made: Baby Duck, Baby Duck, Are You in the [color] Egg?

And well before that (in 2009, I think, in fact!), I posted THIS about flannelboards in general (which includes my BINGO flannel and monster game flannel)

So hey! I guess I DID post a Flannel Friday today!

Happy Anniversary, y’all!

SO. MANY. IDEAS!

Today’s (not flannel) story is on page 54. Mrs. Mark has a living room painted white, because that’s her favorite color. But when she sees the trunks of the trees outside, she decides that brown is her favorite color and so she paints her living room that color. This continues for a while – Mrs. Mark seeing something and deciding to paint her room that color.

We use a file folder, taped shut on all but one side, with a paint can image glued on front and the “paint” cut out to reveal the color. The color sheets are in order in the file folder, and every time she changes her mind, you pull the top sheet out to reveal the new color. I, of course, put labels on the colors.

Finally, Mrs. Mark decides she loves all the colors equally and can’t choose just one, so she decides to paint the room…

…like a rainbow!

I laminated the file folder so that it would be sturdier. Patterns for all the stories in Storytime Magic are provided online (at the link above), so I didn’t have to draw this great paint can myself. What a great resource this book is! Thanks, Anne, for the recommendation!

The full Flannel Friday roundup today will be hosted by Mollie, and you can click the link to the right to see all past flannels organized in a visual fashion. Enjoy!

Nothing-at-all is perfectly contented to be invisible as long as he can do all of the same things his visible brothers can do. Until, one day, the brothers are adopted by a boy and a girl, who don’t take Nothing-at-all because they cannot see him. Nothing-at-all follows but soon loses them. A friendly Jackdaw, whose task it is to “carry home everything I see,” has helpfully found a Book of Magic which contains a spell to make something that is Nothingy into Somethingy. Needless to say, it works, and Nothing-at-all is able to rejoin his brothers.

Wanda Gag’s illustrations have an undulating quality. The soft pastels (?) seem to move. I loved this book – and if it weren’t so long I would surely share it with the preschoolers! They’d have such fun with the “I’m busy/Getting dizzy” part!

Nothing At All won the Caldecott Honor in 1942.

I’d better get crackin’. The best thing about Laura’s challenge is that THERE ARE NO RULES. You don’t have to read the books in any particular order (which is good because some of them we have in the library, and some I will have to request from other libraries or ILL). You don’t have to set a time limit, if you don’t want to. So, my personal goal is to simply READ THEM ALL. Preferrably this year.

I’ve already started from the bottom up; again, not in order, but that’s how I’m keeping track: I’m ordering the books from the earlier years first and reading them as they come in. I read Andy and the Lion and Barkis this morning, and have Wee Gillis, Abraham Lincoln, and Snow White and the Seven Dwarves on my desk. I probably won’t review all of them here as I really only like to write reviews of books that a) I love and b) feel inspired to write about.

Wanna challenge yourself? Get the full list of Caldecott Medal and Honor books. If you have a blog and want to indicate your participation, Laura has made an icon available.  And remember, if you tweet, don’t forget to add the hashtag #nerdcott so we can all enjoy each other’s company!

I give every child a picture of a bear. If you have enough teddies on hand to give them each a real one, great, but I do not. I made 24 of these – just clipart images of teddies, covered in contact paper (so they can be wiped off if necessary), and cut out:

We then recite this rhyme, moving the bear around to the body parts indicated:

Bippity, boppity, boo, there’s a teddy bear on my…shoe!

Bippity, boppity, bee, there’s a teddy bear on my…knee!

Bippity, boppity, belbow, there’s a teddy bear on my…elbow!

Bippity, boppity, bose, there’s a teddy bear on my…nose!

Etc…continued for as long as you can find rhymes!

This is very similar to “Willoughby Walloughby Woo,” in fact, I almost said elephant instead of teddy bear several times. I guess you COULD use almost any animal for this rhyme! I just happened to be doing a bear storytime right now.

That’s all for now, folks! Most flannel friday-ers will be taking the next two Fridays off since we’re all so busy around the holidays, and I’m no exception. See y’all again in the new year! And THANK YOU for your love and comments throughout the year! I appreciate you!

Visit Linda at Notes from the Story Room later today to see the full roundup. Click on the link to the right to visit our Pinterest page and see all the flannels nicely organized and pictured!

A little girl was looking at her new pink watch and whispering to a friend. The teacher tapped her on the shoulder to get her attention and quiet her down. The girl looked at me, and I asked her what time it was. “It’s storytime!” she chirped.

Don’t we all need a watch like that?

A little boy was jabbering in Spanish, telling me something about the “noche” (I’m fluent, but he was talking so fast I didn’t get it all). Another little boy looked at me and said: “Asi se dice night.” [that's how you say night]. Thanks, buddy, for the translation! And good on you for being bilingual!

I got the best card from one of my classes today, with a picture of all the kids and their signatures. Things like that I always treasure. I work with some fabulous teachers, and the students they teach are a delight.

Mitten! 2 layers of sparkly, snow-white felt.

Animals!

And finally, the mitten, brimming with animals (okay, not really. You could make multiples of the animals for a larger group and they would fit. It’s a BIG mitten!

This would also make a great take-home craft after sharing the book in storytime; kids could re-tell the story from memory, which is a great early literacy booster!

Other versions of The Mitten folktale: by Jim Aylesworth (illustrated by Barbara McClintock) and by Alvin Tresselt.

Please visit Mrs. D. at Putting Smiles on Faces for the full Flannel Friday Roundup!  And click the icon to the right to visit our Pinterest boards and see all the flannels in one fell swoop!

I like the phrase “one fell swoop.” It’s fun to say. Why don’t I say it more often?