Felt Fun!! {felt board and figures}

My kids love their felt board, so I just had to share.

Felt boards are incredibly easy and inexpensive to create. This particular one is a cork board that I rescued from my church dumpster when they were doing some spring cleaning. The frame is metal, so I removed it and spray painted it. Then I sprayed the cork board with spray adhesive, laid the felt down, stapled down the back and replaced the frame. This usually stays in their play room, but we're doing a little work  in there right now, so I brought it downstairs for them to play with.

Now that my daughter is old enough to tell familiar stories (5 Little Monkeys, 3 Little Pigs, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, etc...) and make stories up this has become especially fun for her. We also plan to use this as a teaching tool for homeschooling this fall. We use it for our Family Home Evening lessons as well.

First, here are the sites that I frequent to print out more stories and pieces:

Preschool Printables -- they have 5 very familiar stories
DLTK -- LOVE these...they have several stories, plus family pieces, farm pieces and others that can be adapted to more open-ended play
Childcare Land- No printables here, but some great ideas of activities that you can cut straight from felt.
Chocolate on My Cranium -- This is where I get all of my scriptural figures. Shes got the figures and the stories that go with them.

How do I make the figures?? For the scripture stories I print them directly onto transfer paper and then iron them to felt. This works wonders because most of the scripture stories print out on just one sheet of paper. But the other stories usually take several piece of paper to print them out and transfer paper can get expensive. So, I print them out on card stock and laminate them. Then I put a little piece of the hook side of Velcro on the back and voila! Super easy and super durable.

It took me a long time to figure out a good way to store them and I am finally pleased with our system. First, all the different sets are filed in regular manila file folders that I have taped along the sides to create pockets. Then I have them all on our office counter in a canvas file box (from W*Mart, about $13??. I also store all of their file folder games in there as well.

This is actually a counter on one random end of our eat-in kitchen where we do lots of art projects and where we will be doing homeschool this fall, so it has turned into a bit of an office space for us.

Anyway, I hope you find some useful links or tips in here. Flannel board stories and activities can keep my children occupied for a while and they can also be such a great learning tool. And when its so easy and inexpensive to put together, its a breeze to incorporate into their playthings. Have fun with it!!

Do you use a flannel board for your children?? Do you have any other sites that have great printable stories and activities?? I'd love to hear about them!!