Felt Board Stories

What You Need:

• Sheets of felt, in various colors
• Scissors
• Fabric glue
• Piece of cardboard - cut to the size your child would like her background to be (optional)
• Felt-tip marker (optional)
• Magazine clippings, old pictures, etc.

What You Do:

1. Start by making a background. If you’re telling the Cinderella story, you might put a castle in the background and a pumpkin patch near the front. For Little Red Riding Hood, your child could put a path through the woods leading to Grandma's house. Keep it simple. Help your child cut out shapes from felt to make the scene, and use fabric glue to attach them to a plain sheet of felt.  You can either glue the plain sheet of felt to a piece of cardboard or you could use the felt without the cardboard.
2. Next, create your “attachables.” To make these, either cut out magazine images or photographs and glue them on felt pieces, or cut out shapes from the felt directly. For the Cinderella story, you might cut out people shapes for Cinderella, the Prince and the wicked stepmother, a fancy dress to go over Cinderella’s rags, horses, a giant pumpkin carriage, friendly mice, or glass slippers, etc. For Little Red Riding Hood your child could make a basket of food, a red cloak, a sneaky wolf, some blooming flowers and a grandmother—whatever your child feels like putting in the fairy tale. Your child can make it as simple or as complicated as they want, but be sure to include enough elements so that your child can play around with the story.
3. Your child can glue pieces of felt on top of other pieces to add character, and if you’re handy with a needle, it’s nice (but not necessary) to embroider faces on the characters.  Otherwise, your child can use a felt tip marker if they would like the characters to have faces.
4. Once you’re done, your child can move the people and objects around on the storyboard to create different scenes and scenarios. And because felt naturally sticks to itself, you don’t need to bother doing anything else to make it work!

Bring out your completed felt board and all of its accoutrements the next time you and your child take a train ride or a long car trip, and watch the time fly by.