Flannel Friday: A Home for Birdie

This week's flannel board idea came from Storytiming! I was doing a bird theme, and when I went a-googling, I stumbled across her very adorable "A House for Birdie" flannel board, based off the book, A House for Birdie by Stuart J. Murphy. I loved the idea and knew immediately I wanted to recreate my own version.

It's a simple enough story. Our friend Birdie (pictured below) is looking for a new house. What he wants though, is a not-too-big, not-too-small, juuuuust-right house, all his own.

He doesn't want to have to go looking all by himself, so he invites some friends along to come help him out!

I need better names for these guys, but at the moment they are Pinky, Birdie, Big Blue, ...Orange Bird, and Gus. (He just looks like a Gus, right?)

Orange Bird, despite his terrible name, is probably my favorite.

Now, in their travels, this Bunch o'Birds come across some mighty interestingly shaped birdhouses.

Haha, from here, the story should be fairly explanatory. I started with the green house, then worked my way through the pink, orange and blue houses until we finally got to the purple one. Birdie tried each one out, but they were all too big (and the pink one, with its sparkles, was just too fancy). Had I thought this through a little bit better, I would have made a bird that was smaller than Birdie, to get that contrast of Birdie being too big for a house, instead of all the houses being too big for him. Alas, I was kind of attached to the idea of Gus and his huge feet.

Anyway, once Birdie has given each house a try, his friends try them out, too, until they're each matched up with their perfect house. The kids did really, really well with this, even though I didn't make the shape match ups TOO obvious (ie, a triangle bird into a triangle house, a square bird into a square house, etc.). I switched it up a few times, too, and after Birdie had decided he didn't fit, I asked them which bird they thought might like this particular birdhouse best. And I think they answered correctly every time!

In other news, I definitely could have planned a bit better with Big Blue. He's juuuuuust a little too big for his birdhouse, which, when the entire point of the flannel board is matching shapes, is a wee bit problematic. I smoothed it over by saying that Big Blue likes a cozy house, but if/when I use this again, I'll be tweaking his abode a little, haha. (Ugh, he was fine until I added FEET.)

You get a birdhouse!

And you get a birdhouse! And YOU get a birdhouse!

EVERYBODY GETS A BIRDHOUSE!

Haha, Oprah jokes aside, this was a fun flannel board to make, and with a little bit of tweaking, it worked really well for my story times. The birdhouses and the birds were made with craft foam, but the black "shape" on each birdhouse is a piece of felt, so that I could stick the birds on easily.

Thanks for stopping by, and I hope everyone has a bird-i-ful day! (Har har har.)