In the fall of 2021, I started running a playgroup for moms with preschoolers at my church during which I teach the children a very short Bible story. We started out learning about creation and made a "pizza book” showing the days of creation. The children were so proud of their books! As I looked to the next stories in the book of Genesis, I tried to imagine how the kids could make other "books" that would help them remember the basic stories that we were learning. To make the books look good, there was going to be a lot of repetitive cutting for me to do. And that is when I had my inspiration: What if, instead of having the kids glue shapes and stickers onto paper to make a book, I made them each a felt storyboard and taught them how to use it to tell those same stories? It would be less cutting for me, as they could just re-use the same figures for the next story. It was Covid, so I had a lot of free time.
I did a little bit of research into felt storyboards and discovered that the best boards are made from flannelette rather than felt, and that a Cricut machine can cut felt. I had always been interested in a Cricut machine, and now I had a good excuse to get one! I found a great source for felt and stocked up on flannelette. I wanted the product to be something that moms could take along with them when they needed a quiet activity, so it had to be self-contained. After much searching, I found some zippered bags with an extra storage pocket, and so I designed the board to fit inside the bag. After a bit of trial and error, I was able to make the basic background pieces to support the stories. My daughter, Jocelyn, who had recently graduated with an art degree, designed the felt pieces for me on the computer and I was able to cut them with my Cricut.
I gave each of the six families a felt board and each week they received a few extra pieces to add to their collection. I told the Bible story using my board the first time, and then they would tell it with me using their boards the second time through. I had to keep them interested in using the pieces, so added some play value by making the animals fit inside the ark and the tent open so Sarah could hide inside when the angel announced the birth of Isaac. Some of the families loved having the felt pieces each week, but others got bored of having the same activity each week, so we did something different the following year. However, I still regularly use Felt & Flannel to teach them Bible stories. The children anticipate the story time and sit attentively, watching the story unfold. Sometimes, I let them help tell the story by adding pieces as they are needed.
I am not sure when I came up with the idea of making the people naked with clothing that could be changed. Perhaps it is because the first story I was doing was Adam and Eve. It was certainly less work for me when making all the pieces for each family if a person could become someone else by just changing their outfit. For simplicity, I decided that each character would have only one pose. This allows all the clothes to fit on anyone. In 2025, I added hair to the back of people’s heads allowing them to also face away from the audience.
One of my goals was to only have a few pieces that could serve multiple purposes. I didn’t want to have to spend a long time finding the pieces for each story and I wanted the whole Bible to be able to fit inside the storage bag. It has been fun to create things that are multi-purpose. The stable is a house on the other side. The city walls started out as the Tower of Babel but can also be Jerusalem or Jericho. The altar doubles as a well. The baskets can hold bread and fish, hay, or even a baby.
I started selling the storyboards as individual story sets back in 2022 but quickly realized that a lot of people are needed for each story. In 2026 I reorganized the sets so that you start with a starter bundle for either the beginning of Genesis or the birth of Christ. Other sets can get added chronologically as you work through the Bible. The additional sets contain only new pieces that you don’t already have. This saves me from having to make so many things and saves people from paying for unnecessary pieces.
I am now presenting Felt & Flannel as the Bible Story Troupe. The people, with their changeable clothes, are like actors on the stage of the flannel board. The background pieces are like sets for a stage as they aren’t always realistic or even proportional. Each companion set includes a few unique pieces to tell a particular set of stories. They are intended to be used with a starter bundle. I have developed a document with my best guess of which pieces would be needed for the major stories of the Old and New Testaments. Sets are not yet developed for Jonah or Babylon, but I hope to come up with them in the next year or so.
In the spring of 2025, a young mom was excited to purchase Felt & Flannel but didn’t know how she could tell the Bible stories to her son as she was a new believer. This led to the idea of Story Charts with suggestions of how you could tell a story using the Bible Story Troupe. I have only completed charts for In the Beginning… stories so far but hope to make more in the coming year. One of the ideas behind the story chart is to allow a young child to match the pieces to the pictures and therefore work independently to tell a Bible story.