How to Make Felt Pieces From a Book

Felt board stories or flannel board stories can be used by librarians, teachers and parents to bring stories or a themed lesson to life. While reading the story the adult can place corresponding felt pieces on the flannel board or move those pieces around to help illustrate the story. Adults can also ask children to volunteer to put pieces on the board. The children enjoy being able to take part in the storytelling, and the hands-on aspect helps reinforce the story.

Instructions

Things You'll Need

• Picture book
• Felt or interfacing
• Tracing paper
• Paper
• Pencil
• Tape
• Scissors
• Craft glue
• Notions such as buttons and googly eyes (optional)
• Crayons, colored pencils or markers (optional)

1. • 1
     Select a simple picture book to create your flannel board. Although you can use any picture book, look for stories with only a few lines of text on each page. The characters in the story should be vibrant and distinct enough that the felt pieces you create will be easily recognizable. Repetitive or predictable stories work well for flannel boards, especially if children will be volunteering to place pieces on the board.
   • 2
     Trace or sketch the principle characters from the book. You do not need to use the exact artwork that is featured in the book. You can create your own versions of the characters or used pre-existing stencils or templates. For example if the characters in the book include a cat, a dog and a duck, you do not need to imitate the illustrations in the book; you can use basic cat, dog and duck shapes that will be easily recognized by your audience. If using interfacing instead of felt, trace the illustrations directly onto the interfacing and color in using crayons, colored pencils or markers.
   • 3
     Cut out the templates you have traced or drawn on paper. Tape the cut out shapes to a piece of felt that matches the color of the character in the book. Cut out the felt by cutting through the pieces of tape holding the paper to the felt and cutting around the paper template.
   • 4
     Cut out any portions of the template that you will be crafting accent pieces from and tape these to the accent-colored fabric. Cut out the accent shapes by cutting through the tape and around the paper template. An example would be giving a white duck a yellow beak and yellow feet. To do this you would cut the beak portion and the feet portion off your paper template and trace them onto yellow felt.
   • 5
     Glue the accent pieces on. You may also wish to glue on other accents such as googly eyes, a pom-pom nose, buttons or other trim. Details can also be drawn in using a magic marker.