Spring Flowers

I found these felt flowers at Target several years ago in their dollar bins.  Each flower is 5" or wider.  With spring starting next week, I'm planning on using them in story time, possibly with more than one rhyme.

Rhymes that I'm considering are:

Five Flowers

 

Five flowers standing in the sun

 

See their heads nodding, bowing one by one.

 

Down, down, down comes the gentle rain

 

And the five flowers lift up their heads again.

 

 

 

My Flowers

 

 

One bright flower in my garden grew,

 

Up popped another and now there are two.

 

Two bright flowers for everyone to see,

 

Up popped another and now there are three.

 

Three bright flowers that I adore,

Up popped another and now there are four.

 

Four bright flowers prepared to thrive,

 

Up popped another and now there are five.

 

Five bright flowers standing straight and tall.

 

Five bright flowers answered Spring's wake-up call.

 

 

Sandy Wallick

 

 I've added a 2nd picture without all the background "noise", but left the first one up because I think it shows the colors better.

 

Laura at Library Lalaland is our host this week, so check out her site for lots of  fun ideas.

Flannel Friday--Sunflowers

     After attending an Every Child Ready to Read 2 workshop, my library ordered a copy of Frances Barry's BIG YELLOW SUNFLOWER.  It opens up into a sunflower, petal by petal, and I wanted to build a storytime around it.  I was surprised with how many sunflower books we had so it was just a matter of finding flannelboard ideas to go with it.   I found what I wanted at Making Learning Fun  where they had "I'm a little Sunflower" rhyme and pattern.  (They also have other related activities)  I enlarged the pattern and cut it out of felt.  As they suggested, I didn't glue the seeds on but I did make a lot of them.  I made five sunflowers.                                     

For my group, I had differing numbers of seeds on each flower from 3 to 8.  We sang the verse with each flower, counting at the end of it.  I had a very large group, so we did this as a group activity rather than having one child come up to count.

The flowers stayed up on the board while we read another story and did an action verse.  When the time came for the next flannel board rhyme, I did a variation of a common five flowers rhyme.

FIVE BIG SUNFLOWERS

Five big sunflowers growing by the door,

I picked on for mother; that left four.

Four big sunflowers so beautiful to see,

I went and picked another one; that left three.

Three big sunflowers looking fresh and new,

Sue Ann picked one; that left two.

Two big sunflowers growing by the dog run,

John Paul picked one; that left one.

One big sunflower lifting toward the sun,

Until I went and picked it; that left none.

The other titles I used were:  THE SUNFLOWER SWORD by Mark Sperring, SCARY MARY by Paula Bowles, and TEN SEEDS by Ruth Brown.

I purchased a sunflower bush and cut the sunflowers off (leaving a long stem).  We then used them to do "Five Sunlowers"  Eventually, I'd like to have enough flowers to hand out so each child could have on and we would just take the number out of the rhyme and do it as a group.

FIVE SUNFLOWERS

Five sunflowers standing in the sun

See their heads nodding, bowing one by one.

Down, down, down comes the gentle rain

And the five sunflowers lift up their heads again.

I found the site, Storytimes Online, very useful for finding fingerplay, song, and book ideas.

This week's Flannel Friday is being hosted by Miss Mary Liberry, check out all the wonderful ideas there!

Ah-Choo!

     A few months ago, I did a preschool storytime on SNEEZES.  I was looking for all kinds of things that make us sneeze--allergies, colds, pollen, etc.  We had the pansy die from Ellison and I came up with this rhyme to use with the die cuts.  I cut them out of felt, and made separate stems and flowers and only glued the blue blossom to a stem.

A FLOWER FOR YOU

Out in the garden the flowers grew

Each with a different color and hue.

I picked the red one just for you,

Then took a sniff and went "Ah-choo!"

Away the head of the flower flew.

(This continues substituting the colors purple, yellow, orange, pink for red until only blue is left)

Out in the garden where the flowers grew,

All that was left was a flower that was blue.

I picked that flower just for you

But I didn't sniff and go "Ah-choo!"

Now I can give you the flower that is blue.