Flannel Friday: except if

I am an elementary school teacher. I work four days a week, including, new to me this past September, planning and leading five story times every Friday for students ages 3-7.

I have gained so many ideas online this year, especially from the sites and members of Storytime Underground and Flannel Friday. I have always loved children’s books and reading to kids and this year I have added puppets and flannel board stories to the mix with happy results. This is my first time participating in Flannel Friday.

I came across the book except if by Jim Averbeck at a public library. The book starts with an the words, spanning several pages and accompanied by lovely, slight of hand illustrations, “An egg is not a baby bird but it will become one, except if it becomes a baby snake.” The story continues with this structure, repeating “except if” several times as it twists creatively though different possibilities, in the end circling back to another egg.

To create flannel pieces for this story I used photocopies of the book’s pages as templates. I added black to the back of the snake so I could hide the lizard behind it. I wish I had made the dinosaur a little bigger, I’ll just have to remember to use a bigger voice when it’s his turn on the board. To make the fossil I sketched the dinosaur using a marker on felt.

For more ideas check out the Flannel Friday website, their Pinterest board, and the Facebook group. This week’s roundup is at What Happens in Storytime.