Learning with Felt

Every week we take Catori to a fun class at the library.  She absolutely loves it and gets super pumped to go and check out new books, see her teachers and get a chance to be social with other small children her age.  It has been fun for both my husband and I to go with her and see her become more and more independent as the weeks go by and just how excited she gets when they are standing up to sing and jump to her favorite song.  One of Catori's favorite parts of the class is at the end when the kids are free to look at books, play with the puppet or use the felt board with colorful shapes.  It finally got to a point where it wasn't so easy to get her to leave anymore because she just had to play with the felt board a little longer.  That's when the light bulb went off!  If she is this focused and entertained by a simple felt board, then I'm thinking we need to find a way to have one at home for her.  Luckily, good ole Aunt Lori had  recently gifted my daughter with a really cool wooden art easel she had found at a garage sale and it provided the perfect set up for a felt board.  I'll happily admit this has been one of the easiest projects I've done and one of the most fun.  Oh, and not to mention.. super cheap!  One sheet of felt from Michael's is around .29 cents and the large 3x3 sheet of black felt was $3.99.  Love it! 
We started off with basic shapes in various colors like they have at the library so we could sing the fun little song we've learned that goes with them.  So of course it only made sense to make the alphabet and numbers next.  It's an awesome tool and way to teach letters, basic words, name spelling, numbers and even arithmetic.  Using this board and different activities will really help prepare her for Pre-K and I'm all about finding fun to new ways to learn and get her excited about education.

Now I cut all of these free hand because I don't have the patience to trace them all out with stencil, but I'm sure some are available if needed.  I personally prefer a more natural hand made look though, just seems to make it a little more original and personal.  There was no rhyme or reason to our color scheme other than we included 3 (yes, I said three) different shades of pink because it is her most favorite color.  But we had all this felt left...so I figured I might as well use it and started coming up with some themes I thought might be fun and helpful.

Weather! This will be a cool way for us to talk about the weather each day and allow her to learn the different symbols and how you can use more than one to describe what is happening outside.  Some other ideas you can use other than what we did below are a lightening bolt, wind or tornado perhaps.

 

Kite for a WINDY day

After a storm RAINBOW

Snowflakes & snowman can only mean SNOW

Bedtime..MOON & STARS



A gloomy CLOUDY & RAINY day

Only PARTLY SUNNY or is it PARTLY CLOUDY

 

 

Flowers were a definite must.  We all absolutely love spending time outside and observing the different flowers with their amazing shapes and colors.  It's also a great way to discuss God's creation and all the beautiful things he has given us in nature.  I made the flowers into three pieces so Catori can decide how many leaves each flower will get and where to put them on stem.  It allows her a little more independence and creativity when designing her flowers.  There are so so many different looks you could do with flowers, the possibilities are endless!

Food seemed to be the next natural progression.  Although trying to focus on more fruits and veggies to reiterate the idea of healthy eating, there's no way we could leave out our favorite treat... ice cream! The food theme was a fun one and has so many more possibilities we could add to this one.

 

Clothes. Everybody needs them and everybody has them. Or it could be my time spent working in the fashion/apparel industry that inspired this one.  However it may go, I thought this one would be fun.  As the seasons change we can add different pieces and styles.  Another idea would be to have different sizes and items for all the different people in your family: dad, mom, big sister, baby, etc.

 

 

 

Faces and hair.  So this one was not as easy for me and no matter how many times I attempted to make it simple, it just wasn't.  I was completely freaked out by the first draft faces. (I'll probably have nightmares of felt faces chasing me..yes, that bad HA)  But after 3 or 4 tries I think I finally came up with something that is slightly more silly than scary. Hopefully.  hehe

I'll try to keep the blog updated with more themes and ideas as time goes on and seasons change. 
Here are some other felt themes and ideas you might want to create.  Enjoy!

*Holiday Themes ~ 4th of July, Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, Valentines, etc
*Sweets ~ candy, lollipops, donuts, pastries, etc
*Landscape ~ depending on where you live you can create mountains, lakes, city scene, etc
*Activities ~ beach/pool bag, sports, etc
*Under the Sea ~ under water fish, plants, mammals, mermaids, etc
*Animals ~ zoo animals, forest animals, barn animals, etc

Easy DIY Bulletin Board

As of recent, we have the extra space in the house for an 'office' area.  I use that term lightly because it basically has served more as an all purpose room verses the standard idea of what an office is.  Yes, both my husband and I have a desk in there, but it seems to be our go to area whenever we just want some time alone, work on a project, get some household paperwork done, paint or anything else we can do creative.  So when figuring out my space in the room, I pretty much knew right away I wanted a bulletin board above the desk.  To me it's perfect place for all my daily info & visual reminders of 'to do' list, monthly birthdays, rec center pool hours, summer fun calendar, etc.  I know a lot of people these days keep all their info in a handy little cell phone, but for me there is just something nostalgic about actually writing things out in a calendar, address book, post-it notes, or info for my bulletin board. I love it.  Now with all the anticipation to get this room fixed up, I didn't want to waste time trying to find or buy a cute one so I began to rummage around the house.  Fortunately enough I knew I had some left over cork squares from a different project, so I figured having that was half the battle and it'd only get easier from there.  I did end up finding a raw wood frame, a thick piece of cardboard for the back, some shelf liner I bought at Dollar Tree and a fabric scrap.

Here we go...

1)Take shelf liner paper (scrap book paper, wallpaper, wrapping paper etc.) and measure to inside rim of frame.  Cut a piece slightly larger than needed and apply to frame. Set aside to dry to you can modify later.

2) Lay the frame on the backing and trace inner part of the frame so you know exactly where the cork will need to go.

3) Measure and trim cork to fit inside frame and secure to back with heavy glue. Set aside to dry

4)  Go back to your frame and with a straight edge or knife, gently slice off excess paper around the edges.

5) Now set frame around cork and make sure there are no large gaps and is lined up correctly

6) Next flip bulletin board over and using a staple gun, attach the back to wooden frame.

7) Measure out your fabric just slightly larger than corked area

8) Apply glue to the bottom edges around frame & cork

9) Lay fabric over cork and with a small knife or letter opener, push the edges of the fabric underneath the frame

10) Set down face up and allow everything to dry and settle for a couple hours.

 

11) Enjoy!

(**note: steps 5-9  In retrospect, I think it might have been easier to have laid the fabric over the cork and applied before attaching the frame. Then there would be no need for step 9.  Still apply a small amount of glue around the edges of the cork board and trim accordingly.  Next apply frame to board and secure on back with staple gun)