Flannel Friday: Toot Toot Beep Beep + Extensions

I love felt stories that can be used in multiple ways. My Flannel Friday submission this week is courtesy of my SUPER AWESOME co-worker Kate Lowe who made this felt story and created the extension activities.  It is based on the picture book Toot Toot Beep Beep by Emma Garcia.  Thank you, Kate, for letting me borrow this felt story and for allowing me to share your genius on my blog!

Here are the cars she created to retell Garcia’s picture book version. Kate said she added in a few extra cars to be able to do the extension activities. If you have a small group of storytimers, this is an excellent story to use to practice turn taking. Give each child one of the cars and have them place it on the felt board as you tell the story.  They could even be in charge of saying the sound associated with the vehicle. She also made a stop sign which can be used to practice letter recognition. Maybe follow it up with a fun stop sign rhyme!

For the extension activities, Kate made a set of numbers 1- 9. Then she plays a “Little Mouse” type game where she asks the kids which car they think came in first place in the race. She uses this rhyme: Race cars, race cars, the race is done! Race cars, race cars, which car won?  Then they lift each car up to reveal a number. The car with the number one is the winner!

Want to practice colours? Kate came up with these two rhymes to help the kids identify the colour of each vehicle.

Little Car

Little car, little car
Can you say what colour you are?

Car Star

I’m a car star.
I will go far.
I can tell you
what colour you are!

There you have it! Three different ways to use these set of cars: to tell a story, to learn numbers, and to recognize colours. Thank you again to Kate for sharing her knowledge of early literacy and superb felt story making skills.  And thank you to Jessica at Storytime in the Stacks for hosting this week’s Flannel Friday round-up!