Flannel Friday: From the Way-Back Time Machine, Alphabet Soup

I have been falling down on this whole Flannel Friday thing lately. I don't even have the camera cord or the Arkansas excuse this week. It has been insanely busy at the branch though, as we gear up for summer reading which launches this coming Monday. Yup, you read that right, our system is starting summer reading a full month before the kids get out of school. I'm even more behind than I thought I was.


So I thought I'd repost an old entry that I don't think ever made it to the round-up. I used it on Thursday in fact, with the letters M-O-M-M-Y for our mother's day themed story time. After story time was over, one little girl who is just now becoming verbal came over, pointed out each letter, told me it spelled "mommy" and pointed out her Mom and said "match!" My cold dark heart melted and all was right with the world again.


Originally posted on January 6, 2012.

This is the easiest flannel in the world. For reals. I started with one set of the alphabet di-cut from various colorful flannel pieces and glued onto contrasting background squares.

The rhyme goes like this:

Alphabet Soup 

A through Z

Let's take a look

What do we see?

And then I put up a one letter on the board. Repeat until you have a word spelled out. Like so:

I don't usually do themes for my story times, but this would work particularly well to introduce the day's theme. I also do it as a transition, using a word or animal sound that will appear in the next story/song/rhyme. It works well for toddler through preschool and in addition to talking about what the word spells, you can have discussions about capital v. lowercase letters and the colors and size of the letters.

I started with 26 and then make additional letters, like the extra L, on the spot when I need them for whatever word I'm using. So far I have an extra P,O, and an L. Keep the words short and sweet and Alphabet Soup works every time.