Flannel Board How To

Ok, this is for Sister Held, who asked how we were making flannel board stories. We have our flannel board, which just has flannel glued on a hard surface. Ours is masonite, but foam core board would work too. In fact I'm working on making a little one just for Elise, so she won't keep tipping over the huge heavy one. So you have your flannel board. Next the stories. There are three ways we've been working on making stories.

Way #1: We just cut shapes out of felt. There are lots of colors, and you can do it free hand, or with a pattern. These shapes work great, and you can add details with a permanent marker. I use a very fine tip one, and it works great. You can even cut felt with some of the scrapbooking machines, like the Sizzix. The cricut ones you can't do felt with yet, but they are coming out with a deeper blade soon, so they will cut felt shapes as well. And there are some felt shapes you can get at the craft store, like letters.

Way #2: I made the prophet dress up game with some heavy duty non-fusible stabilizer, or interfacing. You can trace the pattern on the stabilizer with a pencil, then color the pattern in with crayon. Take a brown paper bag, or some brown wrapping type paper, place it over your pattern, then iron through the paper with an iron on low setting. This is just to set the crayon. Some of the crayon will melt onto the paper. Some kinds of stabilizer you will start to see the crayon from the wrong side, that's how you know it is set. Others, you just see the crayon on the paper. Then you can outline your pattern with a fine tipped permanent marker (I use the Ultra Fine ones) and cut it out. They turn out pretty cool. I use this method for things I need to trace, as well as things that will stick together. The pieces of the prophets needed to stick to the body, and the stabilizer sticks to itself enough to hold it onto the flannel board. Make sure your stabilizer is NOT FUSIBLE, and that your paper is between the stabilizer and the iron, and/or the ironing board.

Way #3: This is for things that are too detailed to trace, and don't need to stick on top of each other. You can photo copy your design onto a piece of cardstock or heavier weight paper. Then color them, cut them out, and laminate them. This helps them last longer than the felt or stabilizer pieces might (especially if your kids are a bit tougher on the pieces). Once the pieces are laminated, you can use felt to stick on the back. You can find felt that is sticky on one side at the craft store. The whole back of the piece doesn't need to be covered in felt, you can just use small squares or circles, and stick them to the back of your laminated pieces. This will allow them to stick to the flannel board.

The church also sells some figure sets separate from the Gospel Art Picture Kit. These can be laminated and have felt stuck to the back, or just stick felt onto the back, and they work great for some fun story time as well.

I have been using the primary partners books to come up with ideas for stories or pieces to make. There are some really cute ideas for the nursery/sunbeam age manual, and they make great visual aids for learning songs or stories. You can also find or make patterns for other figures or pieces from coloring books. You can use the computer clip art to make patterns as well. Today I also cut out a bunch of circles, squares, and triangles, with the idea that my girl can just experiment and make things with the different shapes.

All in all, flannel board stories are way fun, and we're getting the chance to be creative in a re-usable way.