Flannel Friday: The Noisy Counting Book

One of my favorite storytime books is The Noisy Counting Book by Susan Schade. It's only available as a board book currently, which makes it too small for the audience to see the illustrations at storytime. So I decided to adapt it as a flannel board.

The animals are Ellison cut outs onto felt, so it was a quick one to make.The bees are very delicate and I had a couple lose an antennae. I've since added some puffy paint details like eyes for the fish and frog and stripes on the bee. I may try this story using a frog puppet instead of the frog felt piece too.

I dropped the crickets from my version because I didn't have a die that looked like a cricket. The original story has 6 animals and my version has 5. On the other hand, I may go back and add more animals or mix in other animals someday to be silly. Maybe there are dinosaurs at the pond? Or tigers?

If you're unfamiliar with this story, Betsy Bird filmed a video of it for her blog, Fuse 8, a few years ago. As you can see, the words are simple but the kids have great fun making the animal noises. Especially the nice loud GADUNGS. It's pretty much the perfect toddler storytime selection. I like this book so much that I have even purchased a copy for our personal library at home.

This week's host for Flannel Friday is Jenna from Stories with Ms. Jenna.

In case you missed it, Rebecca Z Dunn interviewed me for In the Field, a blog series featuring interviews with working youth services librarians. Check it out!