Months of the Year

As December comes to a close my mind turn to celebrating the New Year. I haven’t really found any good picture books about celebrating a new calendar year. However, it is a great time to talk about the passage of time.

Several years ago my colleague Elizabeth shard with me her poem about all twelve months that she used with flannel boards. It is set to the tune of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” I made a slight alteration in December depending on if I wanted to reference Santa or not. If not, I have a snow covered pine tree to use instead. It has take me the intervening several years to finish creating this flannel because it kept getting put the back of my to do pile. I really liked how it turned out.

Months of the Year PDF

January, January, what do you see?
I see snowflakes falling on me.

February, February, what do you see?
I see valentines coming to me.

March, March, what do you see?
I see shamrock coming to me.

April, April, what do you see?
I see raindrops falling on me.

May, May, what do you see?
I see spring flowers looking at me.

June, June, what do you see?
I see ants crawling on me.

July, July, what do you see?
I see fireworks popping for me.

August, August, what do you see?
I see the hot sun shining on me.

September, September, what do you see?
I see the school bus waiting for me.

October, October, what do you see?
I see a jack-o-lantern smiling at me.

November, November, what do you see?
I see a turkey running from me.

December, December, what do you see?
I see a snow covered pine tree standing majestically.

Popsicles

As I was poking around the depths of the internet for flannel board stories that I could use during the summer I came across the blog Storytiming written by Cate. Cate has a great flannel inspired by the song “Popsicle” by Jodi Simon Koplin. I used the face pattern from the Storytiming blog and made my own popsicles. As I go through the song I add the color tongue to the face that matches the popsicle.

A House of Shapes

Recently I was going through our shelf of books giving ideas for for storytimes, fingerplays, and flannel boards and came across “Fingertales” by Joan Hilyer Phelps. A fortunate discovery as I found several flannel boards on themes we use on a yearly basis and don’t have a lot of flannel boards to use with. One of the flannel boards I found is “A House of Shapes.” This one does double duty. It works for both a Houses and Home theme as well as a shapes theme. It was very quick to put together. I did add some embroidery to the roof to make it a little more interesting to look at.

A House of Shapes

Some houses are wood and some are stone.
But let’s build one with shapes alone.

Start with a square, but we won’t stop.
Add a triangle up on the top.
Then a rectangle for the door.
Now square windows–1, 2, 3, 4!
A little circle just for fun.

Now our shape house is all done.