Flannel Project: Storytime Visual Schedule

Several years ago I made a Very Hungry Caterpillar visual schedule for storytimes. While I love it, I have not used it in awhile since it has been harder to incorporate and for kids to see in large crowds. A peer librarian at one of the other libraries in my system does a flannel visual schedule. He adds the flannels to the schedule as he does the activity. I brainstormed some ideas we could turn into a flannel visual schedule with my programming library assistants and we decided that a 'bookshelf' would be a fun concept to try out.

To start, I used a flannel-backed poster-board that I already had on-hand from my Rocketship Run project from last year. I added a layer of backing to the back-side of the Rocketship Run poster-board. 

The next step was blowing up images of floating shelves via Powerpoint. I don't even have flannel that was the length I needed so I had to be careful with the templates to piece them together so it would be difficult for people to see that they were two separate pieces.

I think the second layer, on the top of the shelves, made it come together.

And the final step was adding books and other items to the shelf without crowding it, to leave room for our flannels as we add them. I decided to add a small plant, a handful of books, and a couple bookends.