I recently did a storytime all about flies and had a lot of fun with it!
Rhyme Cube: Click here for a description
Sign Language: Today we learned the word “fly” and repeated it often.
First Book: Old Black Fly by Jim Aylesworth
Rhyme:
Two little shoo flies sitting on the wall
One named Peter, one named Paul
Fly away Peter! Fly away Paul!
Come back Peter! Come back Paul!
Second Book: Tiny Little Fly by Michael Rosen
iPad App: Felt Board by Software Smoothie
Felt Board is one of my new favorite apps. It allows you to create felt boards by providing different backgrounds and objects that you can “glue” down. Here is the felt board I created for this week’s storytime:
I used it to go with the following rhyme:
There’s a Bug on the Teacher
by Kalli Dakos
(I changed the word “bug” to “fly”)
There’s a bug on the teacher,
and it’s crawling on her shoe.
What will she do?
It’s crawling on her shoe!
There’s a bug on the teacher,
And it’s crawling on her pants.
Has us in a trance,
That bug on her pants.
There’s a bug on the teacher,
And it’s crawling on her shirt,
I hope it doesn’t hurt,
That bug on her shirt.
There’s a bug on the teacher,
And it’s crawling on her neck,
Everyone check,
It’s crawling on her neck!
There’s a bug on the teacher,
And it’s crawling on her nose,
Why do you suppose
It’s crawling on her nose?
(I found the rhyme on Miss Mary Berry’s blog)
I created the “teacher” in the Felt Board app and “glued” her down along with her hair, face, and clothes. I then added the fly but did not glue him down. This allowed me to move him around as I recited the rhyme.
I held the iPad facing the kids and moved the fly along to the rhyme. At the end when she sneezes, I asked the kids to sneeze with me and moved the fly really quickly to the floor.
We had a lot of fun with it.
Third Book: Shoo Fly! by Iza Trapani
Rhyme/Activity:
I pre-made pipe cleaner flies and gave one to each child. The idea came from the Sunflower Storytime blog and she has some great pictures and directions on how to make them.
We used the flies as we sang the following song:
“Shoo fly, don’t bother me
Shoo fly, don’t bother me
Shoo fly, don’t bother me
I belong to somebody!”
We sang it a few times and each time we put the fly on a different body part (our heads, knees, belly buttons, ears, and finally our noses) Then we sneezed and the flies flew away just like in the previous rhyme.
AnnesLibraryLife 
I couldn’t find an e-mail address for you, so ask my question here. I just downloaded the Felt Board app to use in our storytimes, and I can’t figure out a way to save a flannel board. For instance, I’d like to make a 5 Green and Speckled Frogs one that I can re-use (jumping the frogs off the log and to the water). So a static screen shot won’t work. And it looks like any time I want to start a new flannel, it totally gets rid of the old one. Is that true? Have you figured out a work-around to this?
Hi Rose!
That’s the one major downfall of that app. I hope the developer issues an update that allows you to save felt boards you’ve made. The only way I know around it is to take a screen shot for each “scene”. So put the felt pieces in place, take a screen shot, move the pieces how you want them, take another screen shot, and so on until you have completed the felt board. If you’re on an iPad you can hold the home button and the power button at the same time and then release to take a screen shot. The screen shot will appear in your photos. You could then make a slide show of the screenshots. I haven’t done a digital felt board like this but Cen at Littleelit.com has and she describes it very clearly at her blog
I hope this helps!
Cool theme. I once did a FLY storytime and afterwards a Mom came up to me and asked shy I decided to to a storytime about DEATH. Cannot recall now which books I used, but i guess the flies all died. I still think it is a good theme, though!
Hah! That patron had an interesting take on your storytime!