Bird Preschool Theme and the Felt Board

Here's a trick...instead of recreating an entire new set of felts to match your Preschool theme or interest, look at your collection, and find the stories (or songs) with the interest inside. For example, if the theme is birds, indeed there are specific stories surrounding the bird as the main character such as...

But, there are also many songs and stories with bird characters inside. So, choose stories or songs, and emphasize the bird to match the current interest. For example, with the following felt pieces below, the Educator can ask  open ended questions to provoke concepts and learning, such as, "Which animals have wings? Which animal has feathers?"

Out in the Garden

The following images are felt pieces in my collection, along with links to blog entries providing more information:

Green Grass Grew All Around

Down By the Bay

Ten Little Yellow Ducks

Brown Bear, Brown Bear

Five Little Ducks

Five Little Penguins



Further Reading Suggestion: 

Ideas for a Preschool Bird Theme

10 Little Rubber Ducks Felt Board Story by Eric Carle

Eric Carle's books correlate to felt stories so effectively. In addition, his stories always contain lessons for young children to learn such as mathematical concepts like subtraction and addition. Years ago, I read 10 Little Rubber Ducks and immediately knew I wanted to turn the book into a felt story. When I finished and was at circle time telling the story, I realized a little mistake that I made... the pieces were so big, it was challenging  to tell the story on a regular felt board easel. I had to take pieces on and off throughout the telling of the story. You can tell through the photos, the creased lines where the felt material has been folded to get into its bag. But, we always learn through our mistakes and since then, when making felt stories pieces, I make them smaller in size. Best of all,  it saves on felt material and cost! So, since the pieces are extra large, the felt story is shown among a number of photos.

The children love this story and at the end I hide the plastic toy duck and squeak it behind the board, so they cannot see.  Throughout the story, the children can help to count the ducks and learn about direction (north, south, east, west, up, down, etc.) I wrote the story on index cards, which makes it easier to tell as I coordinate the felt pieces.

Online Early Childhood Workshops with Circle of Ideas