This story by Eric Carle is an ideal interactive felt story for young children. As the teacher chants, "Brown bear, brown bear, what do you see?" the children can respond with "I see a redbird looking at me," and add the colorful bird to the other animals that are already on the board. This story teaches colors and animals while helping children acquire language through the use of rhythm, repetition and rhyme. An easy way to make this story into a felt presentation is to make color copies of the animals, cut them out, laminate them and glue pieces of Velcro to the backs.
This classic tale is a opportune story for teaching children comparative adjectives--colder, hardest. The story of a little girl breaking and entering never fails to generate plenty of discussion, giving teachers an opening to discuss safety, strangers and etiquette. Coloring pages are easy to find for this story, giving teachers something to work with when making the felt cutouts.
This Reading Rainbow selection is a Mexican folktale by Verna Aardema that tells the tale of a little lamb who is threatened by a coyote. It is a classic trickster tale, except in this story, the twist is that the trickster is the lamb. For the felt board, you need a white lamb and a brown coyote with big teeth. Landscape features that are important to the telling of the story are a mountain, lake and meadow. You'll need two full moons for the scene in which Borreguita tricks the coyote into thinking the reflection of the moon in the lake is a hunk of cheese. This book never fails to delight children, and they will enjoy interacting with a felt board and telling the folktale themselves.
The alphabet comes alive in this story by Bill Martin Jr. and John Archambault that will have children clapping in time to the rhythm as they see the ABCs running and climbing up the coconut tree on the felt board. Repetition helps children learn the story quickly and begin to tell--or chant--it themselves. Preparing this felt board story is simple, as ABCs for the felt board are easy to find. The only thing to make is the coconut tree.