Flannel Friday Guest Post: Five Little Leaves

On Tuesday, I met up with a good friend (also a local children's librarian). During our conversation I mentioned that I was hosting the Flannel Friday Round-Up this week. She was very excited to hear about the group and wanted to know more. I showed her the website and a few of the past Round-Ups on my laptop. 

She loved them! 

But ~ was a little bummed because she doesn't have a blog. I offered to have her as a "Guest Poster" anytime she wanted to share an idea. This interested her immediately.

She asked what our theme was for this week. After my explanation that we don't usually have a theme, she asked what I was doing for the week. When I mentioned Fall leaves, she smiled happily and said that she might have something to contribute since that was her storytime theme this week, too. 

And that is how we came to have "Lindy" as a Guest Poster this week! 
(I put her name in quotes because she doesn't want me to use her real name yet. Her library is rather strict about an "on-line presence" so she isn't sure if she would get in trouble or not. Until she has a chance to find out, she will be "Lindy".)

Lindy works mostly with 3 and 4 year olds. She "enjoys seeing their faces light up when she shares a new song or rhyme so she tries to share a new one each week". (That is the reason she was excited to learn about our group! New songs and rhymes!)

This week at her Fall storytimes, she shared a magnetic board rhyme called "Five Little Leaves". She mentioned that  it should be easily transferred to a flannel board set.

Here is the rhyme and a few pictures that Lindy emailed me:

Five Little Leaves

Five little leaves in the tree next door,

One fell off and then there were four.

Four little leaves all over the tree,

A bird pulled off one and now there are three.

Three little leaves up where the wind blew,

One fell off and then there were two.

Two little leaves sitting in the sun,

A bug ate a leaf and now there is one.

One little leaf in the tree alone,

The wind blew and blew and now there are none.

Lindy says that she starts with a bare tree on the magnetic board and has the children help her count each leaf as she puts it on the tree. Then, as she recites the rhyme, she adds the other pieces (bird, grasshopper, wind) to the board as they appear in the rhyme and removes a leaf with each verse.

Other pieces:

Lindy made her magnetic pieces by finding pictures in books that her library has in their professional collection. She copied the bird, grasshopper, and cloud pictures onto white construction paper and colored them with crayons before laminating them. For the tree, she cut the trunk out of brown construction paper ~ freehand! (I'm impressed!) ~ and then diecut the leaves out of green construction paper. She laminated these pieces, too, Then she added a piece of magnetic stripping to the back of each one.

Lindy recommends this counting rhyme for many different storytimes. She has used it for Fall, trees, birds, bugs, and even a weather storytime. Very versatile!

Thanks, Lindy, for joining us this week and sharing this fun magnetic board set and rhyme. I hope you can join us again for another Flannel Friday Round-Up real soon!