Flannel Friday: It's Just Emooootions, Taking Me Over

Hello, hello, fellow Flannel Friday-ers! A few weeks ago, I did a flannel board that involved an Angry Bird hiding under an egg. (Thanks, Miss Sarah!) When I revealed the Angry Bird, I asked my story timers to give me their maddest face, which resulted in total hilarity (if you are me). Two-and-three-year-olds with scrunched up grumpy faces are adorable.

Obviously, the next logical step was to do a feelings/emotions story time! We had a lot of fun reading Grumpy Bird and Happy Is..., not to mention our rousing rendition of If You're Happy and You Know It (followed by If You're Sad, Mad, Scared, Sleepy, etc.). For our flannel board, we did expressions - this one was so easy and SO fun, we had a great time with it!

I started out with simple circles with nothing more than eyes. One by one, I'd put up one of the expressionless faces, ask what color it was, and then describe a scenario to my kids. For example: What if your mom and dad gave you a big box and inside the box was a... puppy! How would that make you feel?

Once we'd decided that puppies would make us happy, we talked about how to turn our yellow face into a happy one. The answer, obviously, is with a great big SMILE. (To extend the flannel board a bit, I sometimes put the unhappy mouth on, or the angry eyebrows, so the kids had the chance to tell me how wrong I was.)

Obviously, our sad face required an upside-down mouth and tears.

The red face, of course, could only be ANGRY. And then we all made silly faces!

This was a fun one, too - we talked about how you might feel if you walked into a room and everyone shouted, "HAPPY BIRTHDAY!" I wasn't sure if my group would think of "surprise" on their own, so I made sure to model it by making a surprised expression myself. I asked if your eyebrows go up or down when you're surprised, then we talked about what shape your mouth makes. Then, I followed this up by rephrasing my example: What if you walked into a room and somebody yelled, "BOO!"

You might be SCARED, which is awfully similar to surprised, so we covered our eyes with our hands to show the difference. Finally, we went through all of the faces that were now up on our flannel board and reiterated how each face was feeling. Then, to finish, I said I felt too bad to leave our sad face feeling sad, so we turned his frown upside down, took away his tears and made him happy instead.

 This was a fun, simple flannel board and a really great way to keep my group engaged and interacting with me. We all had a lot of fun, and I think everyone left happy! :)