Flannel Friday: Oh, Lovely Mud!

HAPPY FRIDAY, YA'LL!

Whew! Here we are again! Where did the week go? 


I'm always a little surprised when Friday gets here so soon. :o}


For the past few weeks, we have been reading books about Farm animals at all of my storytimes. It is a very popular theme with the 3 and under groups, the visiting preschool groups, and my weekly Family Storytime group. Even the grown-ups seem to enjoy it. Which is always a plus! ;o)


I decided that for this week's Flannel Friday contribution, I would share one of our most popular Farm books. (I will be sharing it again next week because I had an encore request from several little ones. I LOVE that! It makes me feel like I am actually accomplishing something when my storytime families ask to hear a book again.)

 The book is: 

It is a delightful little book with simple illustrations that the children love! It is often used in Kindergarten and First Grade classrooms because it is easy enough for beginning readers to read on their own.

While re-reading the book and trying to come up with an appropriate Storytime Craft for my youngest friends, I decided that I wanted to make my storytelling pieces reversible.Such a cool idea! (More on the reversiblity in a minute...)

For those of you who don't know the book, it has four characters ~ Mrs. Wishy Washy, Cow, Pig, and Duck.

This is an illustration from the book.

Now, Cow, Pig, and Duck are fun-loving animals and they decide to play in a mud puddle ~ "Oh, lovely mud!"

Mrs. Wishy Washy, who is less fun-loving and more no-nonsense, decides they are too dirty and need a bath. She pulls out her tub and ~ "Wishy-washy, wishy-washy."

The animals all get scrubbed and cleaned BUT ~ wait! What happens when Mrs. Wishy Washy turns her back!?!!??

Shhh! I'm not telling! You'll have to read the book to find out! ;o)

So, now that you know the basics of the story, I'm sure you can guess where I am going with the reversible pieces idea.

*Special Note: I'm positive that the idea of reversing the pieces came to my mind because of a recent Flannel Friday post. But try as I might, I can't completely recall what post it was or who posted it right at this moment (I'm sorry!) However, I do remember that the blogger in turn linked back to Mel's Desk for her Five Pigs So Squeaky Clean flannel. Since Melissa is our host for this week's Flannel Friday Round-Up, I hope you will visit her blog to see her pigs and also take a look at this week's contributions on Flannel Friday's new website here.

Back to Mrs. Wishy Washy and pals:

Once I started thinking about how to portray Mrs Wishy Washy and her dirty crew through props,  I suddenly got smart (Ummm, excuse me! It sometimes takes me awhile but I do have my moments ~ every so often.)

I thought, "Hmmmmm... Why re-invent the wheel? I wonder if someone else has already made this craft."

I made a quick google search and sure enough! I found some ideas. I didn't find exactly what I wanted but I did find some patterns that I could tweak for my own purposes. I love not having to do everything from scratch! I highly recommend doing a web search before creating any storytime props or crafts ~ unless you just enjoy the process of creating your very own from beginning to end. If f you do enjoy the process  then by all means create away! :o)

My search gave me way more than I had time to look at and definitely more than I have time to share here. But I'll share the one site that I used in making my props and my storytime craft that I am giving each child next week.

The site is Making Learning Fun. It has a ton of ideas and printables to be used with the Mrs. Wishy Washy books. (Oh, did I mention that there are several books about Mrs. Wishy Washy and her dirty crew?!??! And each one is just as fun as the original.)

I decided to use this picture to make my Mrs. Wishy Washy. I found it at Making Learning Fun.

I created my Mrs. Wishy Washy and friends using the cut-paper technique that I used before when I made the Story Folder for I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed Some Bugs. 

It took me awhile to finish Mrs. Wishy Washy because I kept getting ideas for more things to add ~ I even debated about whether or not she should have doll hair! LOL I against it though since I needed to laminate her.

I also gave her hair scarf some special attention.

It had to be perfect! Even if she is only washing the farm animals, Mrs. Wishy Washy is very particular about her hair and her looks ~ she actually reminds me of my own lovely Grandma in that respect. :o)

Taaa-daaaa! Here she is!

Next, I made the tub. But, again, it needed to be just right for Mrs. Wishy Washy! I made it by taking this picture from the Making Learning Fun site:

 

And tweaking it:

I enlarged the tub, drew a back piece to fit the front, and copied both onto grey construction paper. I added lots of bubbles using white construction paper to both pieces and laminated them:

Once they were laminated, I trimmed off the extra lamination and they were glued together with a thin line of Tacky glue along the sides and bottom ~ to form a pocket for the animals to be slipped into.

Now for the best part! Reversible animals! AND "lovely mud!"

I like to tie my storytimes together in any way that I can so I decided to use the Cow and Pig from my Big Red Barn story prop.

They came from a sheet of stickers that I have had for years and years. It has lots of farm animals on the sticker sheet so I took my Duck from there, too. I scanned all the animals and then a friend of mine helped me put them in Photoshop and make them black and white. Now I have them all in color and in black and white and I can re-size them for any project that I want to use them for.

**Special Note: I don't know where the stickers came from so I can't give proper credit. I do know that they were purchased through a "teacher store" during my teaching days. Most items I bought back then were "shareable" under the umbrella of "educational purposes". I don't mind sharing but I don't feel right posting them directly to my blog.  If you want them, please email me at storytimeabcs(at)gmail(dot)com and I will send them to you in an email. Or you could draw your own, find some in an image search, or use the ones on the Making Learning Fun site mentioned above.

Anyway... here are my Cow, Pig, and Duck ~ mirror images ~ ready to be glued back-to-back so that they are reversible.

After gluing the animals together, I started on my mud puddle. I drew a squiggly flattened oval onto brown construction paper and added the "mud".

Here is what I used for the muddy part:

Scissors, kitchen sponge, and brown tempera paint

I added the brown paint by dabbing the sponge all around the puddle. I also added the paint to one side of each animal so that they appeared muddy.

I let the paint dry and cut out the puddle. I laminated and trimmed all of them along with Mrs Wishy Washy and the tub pieces.

Everything turned out just the way I hoped they would! I am so excited to share them with you and with my storytimes friends at next week's programs!

Are you ready for a final look? 

I am using mine on my magnetic board so I added magnets  on to the back of Mrs. Wishy Washy, the tub, and the mud puddle. I used some double-sided tape for both sides of the animals since they are reversible. I love that! And I think my storytime friends are going to love the surprise element of it, too. :o)

I will be offering a smaller version as a take-home craft for my young friends. My storytime families enjoy being able to take a craft home that allows them to retell a book from our weekly storytime.

I think they will be very excited to have this book as a Storytime Craft!

If you decide to recreate Mrs. Wishy Washy and her silly friends, I would love to see a picture of your version and/or hear about your experiences.

I am considering dressing up as Mrs. Wishy Washy or ~ maybe her long-lost sister, Mrs. Splishy Splashy, who loves to have fun in the tub! LOL!

Maybe we can have lots of bubbles at our storytimes...

I'll let you know if I dress up. But, if I do, I think I need to find me some big yellow rain boots ~ or wellies as some of my young friends call them. Ha ha!

Enjoy your weekend! 

And, as always ~ 

HAPPY READING TOGETHER!