Homemade felt board

I've told you many times how I love my local library.  Today I'm going to share a cool thing that I was able to get from my library.  They were having a free class on how to make homemade felt boards.  Now I mentioned to you that Little Man loves to play on the felt board at the library, so I thought making one to use at home would be great.  The session was an hour long one Saturday and everything was provided for free.

We were given a (clean) pizza box and a piece of black felt to staple on.

Here's how it looked.

(above is the inside flap)

Pretty nifty, right?

It can even stand up like a felt board.

Part of the point of the class was to teach ways to present literacy skills to kids.

Obviously, being the teacher--I just wanted the box! :)

But they did give us some packets with samples and patterns to use for felt board stories.

Then we could use patterns cut from the Ellison machine or cookie cutters to cut as many shapes out of felt as we would.

Here's some of what I did...

Random shapes

Can be used to tell a story...

We went to a class on butterflies at our local science museum recently.

We learned about the life cycle of a butterfly and are currently watching our caterpillar change.

I made a quick life cycle for use to review with.

(The only green felt I had was what I used for the leaves, so I made the chrysalis orange.  Don't judge!)

Then we used the felt board to practice our patterns.

The best part is... when you are done, it can all be stored inside the box! :)

You can make one too!  It's super easy.