Flannel Friday: Irish Story Time

This week's Flannel Friday has an Irish theme. I know it's not St. Patrick's Day for a good long while yet, but my library system is participating in a festival about the countries in the European Union, and my branch is doing a preschool story time focused on Ireland. The story time is happening next week, so I'm putting the finishing touches on my repertoire today. Because I expect the average age of my audience to be around two years old, I'm using a lot more flannel boards than usual because the books we have on Ireland are much better suited to older children.

Here's some of what I have planned:

The Colors on the Irish Flag

(Tune: The Farmer in the Dell)

Orange, white, and green

Orange, white, and green

The colors on the Irish flag

Are orange white and green.

My idea for this song comes from Melissa at Mel's Desk, who suggested a red, white, and blue flannel activity for the Fourth of July earlier this year. I have a set of clip art photos and drawings of objects that match each of the three colors on the Irish flag. Depending on the age of the kids who actually show up, I will either have them put up the objects, or I will just ask the group to tell me what color each one is, and put them up myself. As each object is place on the board, we'll sing a verse like this:

The tennis ball is green

The tennis ball is green

The colors on the Irish flag 

Are orange, white, and green. 

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Five Little Fairies
(Lyrics transcribed from Track 46 on Demon Music Group's
100 Songs for Children: Sing-Along Favourites)

Five little fairies

Sitting on the floor

One ran away,

And then there were four. 

Four little fairies 

Sitting in a tree 

One flew away,

And then there were three.

Three little fairies 

how do you do?

One went "Pop!" 

And then there were two.

Two little fairies

Lying in the sun

One fell asleep, 

And then there was one. 

One little fairy

All alone

Say goodbye,

It's time to go home. 

I created my fairies using this coloring sheet. I colored them in using Microsoft Paint, then printed them out and covered them with Contact paper as usual. I will sing this song a cappella, because it saves the trouble of having to burn the recording to CD.

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One Green Shamrock

(from DLTK.com)

One green shamrock
in the morning dew,

Another one sprouted,

and then there were two.

Two green shamrocks
growing beneath a tree, 

Another one sprouted,

and then there were three.

Three green shamrocks
by the cottage door

Another one sprouted,

and then there were four.

Four green shamrocks
near a beehive

Another one sprouted,

and then there were five.

Five little shamrocks
bright and emerald green

Think of all the luck

these shamrocks will bring.

I love finding rhymes that count up to five, instead of down to one. It's a simple thing, but it feels like it adds such variety and possibility to the "five little" formula.

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My pdf files for all three of these flannel boards are below:

• shamrocks.pdf
• irishflag.pdf
• fairies.pdf

This week's Flannel Friday host is Tracy at 1234 More Story Times. She's asking us to provide our links either in comments to her post, or on Twitter (@tcy28). Also check out Flannel Friday's boards on Pinterest, and the list of previous Flannel Friday round-ups at So Tomorrow.

Have a great weekend!