Tag Archives: robots

Flannel Friday: Make a Robot!

26 Oct

Here’s a flannel idea that includes vocabulary learning (shapes, sizes), print awareness (shape names) and a whole lotta fun! We’re gonna build a robot!

I cut a bunch of different-sized shapes out of felt. I stuck to square, rectangle, triangle and circle (because my portable flannelboard is small) but you could certainly add more. I also made labels for the four shape names in felt with fabric paint.

The first thing we did was organize our robot “parts.” I put up the shape names and then I asked the kids the name of the shape I held up and put it with its name. I only asked them about 2 or 3 of each shape, because I made lots and it would have taken too long. But we did talk about if the new shape was “bigger” or “smaller” than the other, and I mentioned that we had small, medium and large sizes.

Then the kids selected a piece for the body (if you have a small enough group you could ask individuals to come up and pick; we just did it by consensus). I asked what other parts we needed (head, legs, arms, feet) and we selected those shapes. Finally, we needed eyes, and I had a special set of those: two large googly eyes with velcro on the back. The result was something like this:

Or this:

Wheel feet!

All-in-all I think the kids had fun and if you do crafts with your storytime it would be fun to then allow the kids to put together their own robots with paper shapes and glue.

The flannel Friday roundup today will be hosted by Lisa at Libraryland. To see all past flannels organized into categories, click on the icon to the right for our Pinterest page.

Happy flanneling!

Trailer Tuesday: Lots of Bots! a Counting Pop-Up Book

25 Oct

My preschoolers love pop-ups. Just like pretty much every other kid. I shared David Carter’s One Red Dot with them for a numbers/colors storytime and they LOVED hunting for the dot and shouting “I see it!” when they found it. I used the story as an opportunity for vocabulary building – the kids had to tell me WHERE on the page/structure they found it, and not just point and say “there” (which they are inclined to do).

Now David Carter has come up with another delightful pop-up that I think my kids will love: Lots of Bots! A Counting Pop-Up Book.  Robots and pop-ups. How could learning to count get any more fun?

 

And, to make things THAT MUCH MORE FUN, Random House is taking advantage of how tech savvy today’s generation is by giving us an app based on Lots of Bots, called Bot Garage! It works on iphone, ipad, and ipod touch, and of course I had to have it.  Give your bot arms, legs, a torso and head, and add a background and accessories. At $.99, it’s a steal!

 

Here’s a picture of a bot I created, whom I named “Trixie”:

Trixie

 

 

%d bloggers like this: