The early learning activity for this month involves two of our five early learning practices: reading and playing together.
Reading Together
Reading together helps a child develop a love of reading, increases their vocabulary and knowledge of the world, and encourages imaginative thinking.
Playing Together
Pretend play helps children learn to think symbolically, develops their narrative language skills, and gives them practice putting thoughts in to words. Children's natural approach to learning is through play.
Storytelling with flannel boards is a perfect playful hands-on learning activity for children. Read to children and then encourage them to re-tell the story or create their own stories using flannel board pieces. This type of play increases a child's imagination and nurtures talent. Story re-telling is an important skill in developing language and memory skills. When children create their own stories, they are also thinking about cause and effect, problem solving, and cooperation.
Flannel boards can also be used to teach match, colors, concepts, and many more concepts.
Rhymes, songs, and games can also be adapted to flannel boards, here is a favorite guessing game for toddlers.
Little Mouse
Little Mouse, Little Mouse,
Are you in the (color) house?
Hide little mouse behind a house before children take turns guessing where little mouse is hiding. Counting the houses and going over the colors is a great way to start this game with toddlers.
Make your own flannel board with a piece of cardboard and cover it with felt fabric. A clean pizza box can be a flannel board for children and is perfect to store all the felt pieces.
The following is a list of books that can be great flannel stories. Get creative and discover learning with your children while playing!
