My friend Melissa over at Mel’s Desk decided to start writing a “Flannel Friday” post – every Friday, she will feature a new flannelboard story that she has used in storytime.  She mentioned this on twitter, and shortly thereafter, Anne at So Tomorrow decided to join in the fun. Not wanting to be left behind, I decided I wanted to contribute as well!

Here’s my inaugural Flannel Friday post, which, appropriately enough, comes from Melissa herself and is related to Anne’s post (the concept is the same).

Unhatched eggs

Here we see eight eggs of varying colors. If my group is small enough, we take turns choosing a color (otherwise I choose an egg and they tell me the color) and then I “crack” the egg open to see if a baby duck is inside! Before looking, we say this:

Baby duck, baby duck, are you in the [color] egg?

A dramatic pause always helps at this point, and I open the egg with a “gasp!”. If the duck isn’t inside, we move on to the next child who chooses a color.

Baby duck, baby duck, are you in the PINK egg?

There he is!  Just to increase the sillyness factor, I added a couple of “surprises” for us to find in the eggs:

If we find the duck before each child has had a chance to choose an egg, I turn the board around and put the eggs back together, moving the duck to another color. I ask the kids to close their eyes (no peeking!) and I made up a little song to remind them. To the tune of “London Bridge”:

Everybody close your eyes,

close your eyes,

close your eyes,

everybody close your eyes,

We’re not peeking.

Everybody keep them closed,

keep them closed,

keep them closed,

everybody keep them closed,

No one’s peeking.

Besides the obvious fun, there are several benefits to doing a flannel like this:

• Learning colors (or patterns – eggs could be striped, or dotted, etc.)
• Learning to take turns (if each child gets to choose a color)
• The chanting rhyme helps with phonological awareness, as children learn to hear the smaller sounds that make up a word.
• You might also count the eggs to practice those skills. How many are cracked? How many are still whole?

This is great fun that the children and I have enjoyed very much. In fact, today, when we found the baby duck, a child was SO excited she began to cry. Wow. That’s powerful.

Tags: baby duck, birds, eggs, flannelboards, Friday Flannel, Storytime