Felt Storyboards
Young children learn through play, and they remember stories through acting them out and retelling them. Felt & Flannel storyboards are South Haven Press’s newest product to help with this. As with the Clothespin People, my first priority in making storyboards was to tell Bible stories. In fact these storyboards were invented for a preschool playgroup that I run at my church. My daughter, Jocelyn, design the pieces for me, and I cut them out with my Cricut machine. Families received new pieces each week to reinforce the Bible story that we were learning. Now I am creating more storyboards to be used while teaching Sunday school or homeschooling.
How do they work? Felt shapes naturally stick to the flannelette board and to other felt shapes. You can move the figures around the felt board to tell a story. I have tried to make this a toy to play with as well as a story-telling tool. My goal is to give as much play value as possible and make pieces as versatile as possible so that the same pieces can be used for multiple stories. Clothes are not attached, and the people all face forwards in the same pose. The Bible story characters have hair on the back of their heads, and can therefore be made to face away from the viewer. The clothes are interchangeable and people can “hold” items. Special pieces open in some way, giving extra play value. For example, the animals all go inside Noah’s ark, and the baskets can hold different items such as apples, hay, and vegetables.
The foundational piece is the flannel board, which can be found in the In the Beginning… Bundle or purchased separately. This bundle also contains various backgrounds and the pieces to tell Bible stories from the first part of Genesis (creation, Adam and Eve, the Fall, Cain and Abel, Noah and the ark). Many individual Bible storyboard play sets are available at present: In the Garden, Noah’s Ark, Abraham and Isaac, Joseph, Patriarchs, Nativity, and Easter. These will work for anyone who already has a flannel board.
A note from a customer:
Hi, 2yrs ago I bought the felt sets for the pizza, as well as the Adam and Eve (and creation extras) and the Noah’s ark sets. My kids have loved playing with the pizza set and still play with it often. The Bible sets got put on the shelf and I never used them. This past Sunday I taught Sunday school for the first time at our new church. It was unexpected, I found out Friday and the topic was Adam and Eve. I prayed for guidance. I remembered the felt set, and so I used it. I opened the Bible and read through Genesis 2 (skipping some, as it was a JK/SK class). I stopped after each part and called on kids to come stick the various things on the felt board. It was amazing. A class of 20 kids sat quiet and completely engaged as I read straight from the “adult” Bible, the entire story. I know it was not me. It was God moving in that classroom. It was amazing. And I wanted tell you how helpful your felt set was!! My youngest is now 4 and I plan to use the sets I bought with her in our homeschool. And I plan to buy more of your Bible sets to use with her and with my Sunday school class. I didn’t grow up Christian and I had never heard of “flannelgraphs.” Now I see why this tool was widely used in churches of past generations. So wanted to encourage you to keep up the good work! God is working through your efforts 🙂
Two play sets are also available about life on a farm. You can either choose to care for animals At the Barn or harvest produce In the Field. If you don’t already have a flannel board, the On the Farm Bundle would be a great place to start.
The Felt and Flannel storyboard bundles are self-contained. The double-sided (blue and black) board folds up and fits inside a zippered storage bag along with the background pieces. A second zippered compartment can hold large pieces and a separate zippered mesh pouch holds the smaller bits. Each additional storyboard play set comes in its own mesh pouch which fits inside the larger storage bag.
Pizza Play Food
It didn’t seem like such a big jump to go from making felt storyboards to felt pizza. I guess I wanted to see if it was possible. Do you remember playing restaurant, complete with menu and play food? I bet your kids like to do that as well. Imagine if you could actually have the ingredients to make a pizza to order? Imagine if your children could practice matching patterns by making pizza in their play kitchen. Imagine a wipe-off order sheet that can be used again and again…. Well, I did and here it is!
This pizza has six saucy slices. Add the toppings as you like to make your pizza your way.