I do “preschool” at home with Scarlette and one of the things I wanted to do with her was play with a flannel board (some people call them felt boards.) I’m old school like that. No pun intended.
But I did not want to pay for a flannel board because I am also thrifty. So I googled “make your own flannel board” and found a couple of variations on how to DIY it. This is what I ended up doing.
First, I purchased two 16×20 stretched artist canvases from the local craft supply store (the framed ones that look like this). This is what I went out on Black Friday for this year, to score good deals on the supplies for this project. It cost $11 for two canvases. (You might even be able to find cheap canvases of artwork at the thrift store and those would work too since you’ll be covering them.)
Then I purchased 3/4 of a yard of black flannel fabric for just under $3. I also bought a sheet of felt in each color at 25 cents apiece as well as two sheets of sticky-backed felt which were 99 cents each. So the total cost for everything was about $15, almost half the cost of just a single flannel board alone!
I wrapped the flannel around each canvas, pulled it taut and staple gunned it to the back of the frame. Correction: my mother staple gunned it to the frame. I do not trust myself not to staple gun my hand to the canvas. You think I’m joking but once Jeff’s college roommate accidentally staple gunned his hand and the fear of such a thing happening has never left me.
That’s it. That’s totally all you have to do to make your own flannel board. The great thing is that these are lightweight so I can easily stash them in the closet when we are done. I’ll most likely hang them inside the closet door when she gets a little bit taller.
Felt sticks to the flannel board so that is what you make your board pieces from. I cut the shapes out of different felt pieces and then I created a full set of alphabet and number circles. I printed them out on cardstock (if I had access to a laminator I would totally recommend laminating these) and then I cut a small square from the sticky backed felt, removed the backing and stuck one to the back of each circle. Now all of my alphas and numbers stick to the flannel board but I didn’t have to cut them all out of felt. Which is good because my cutting skills are really sub par. Please see the orange square above as evidence of this.
Scarlette loves these flannel boards. I decided to make them because she liked to line up all of her flashcards on the floor and I thought it would be easier for her to have something upright. Each morning we play a game where she tells me what each letter/number/color/shape is and then runs to put it on the board.
I’ll use this for each of our monthly themes as well, such as when we learn about the weather or the nativity. I use this book for a lot of my activity planning and it has a ton of templates + rhymes to do felt play with. I’m currently cutting out five little ducks. They go out one day but sadly, only four little ducks come back.
You can get a ton of ideas for flannel board activities from these sites: DLTK’s Felt Board Printables | Storytime Katie | Felt Board Ideas Blog | Ideas For Preschoolers
And since I had the alphabet/number circles already, I made them into PDFs so that if you want to use them you are more than welcome to. Each circle is about 3×3.
Click this link to download: CircleAlphasandNumbers
