Have fun teaching old and new with felt
Thanksgiving is a great time to try out these quick, inexpensive tips for teaching the concepts old and new! Felt is fun for students and you since it is inexpensive, quick to prepare, and can be used from year to year. Best of all, it lets you reinforce short-lived classroom vocabulary while teaching concepts that can be used over and over again. Check out these 3 inexpensive quick tips for teaching old and new!
1. Get your felt board ready.
Felt boards are one of my favorite kinds of activities for young students since they learn best when manipulating objects and moving around. And it is inexpensive and quick to set up! You don’t even need to buy an expensive felt board to use felt activities. Just go to your local fabric store and buy a large piece of felt in your favorite color.
- If you have a corkboard on your wall, tack it there.
- If you don’t, get a dowel or yardstick at any craft or hardware store. Roll the edge of the felt piece over it and glue the ends together. Make sure that the ends of the dowel stick out far enough past the edges of the felt that you can tie the ends of a cord on each side. Yarn and string will also work.
- Attach it to your wall with a nail, to a magnetic board using a strong magnetic clip that can grip the cord, to the hooks that are above the old fashioned blackboards, over a doorknob, or wherever you can!
Here is a photo of a fun wall hanging that my daughter-in-law gave to me. See that the dowel goes through the seam and has a cord tied on? Presto! Instant wall hanging!
2. Make your felt sets for old and new items.
While felt sets for sale are adorable, don’t despair if you can’t afford them! And you don’t have to painstakingly cut out pieces of felt, either.
Just take any unlaminated pictures you want to use and glue them to pieces of felt with regular school glue. Spread it thin, let it dry and you have an instant felt set!
3. Try these fun felt activities with movement built in!
- Have the students label the pictures they want to place on the felt board. Use additional pictures, like the old and new houses in the photo, and you have a sorting task for old and new.
- Put all of the felt pictures on the board. Ask a question and let a student go find the answer.
- Give some clues about one of the pictures and see if the student can find which one you are talking about- an instant activity for building inference skills!
- Glue the pictures onto square pieces of felt, make duplicates, and you have a movement memory game.
- Turn one set of pictures over so that the photo doesn’t show. Let your students take turns throwing a beanbag at the felt wall so that a picture falls down. If they use their target skill correctly, they get to keep the picture. When all of the pictures have fallen, the student with the most collected is the winner.
- Bring the same old and new pictures back in the winter to review. Use a soft fabric snowball for the same activity and you have indoor snowball play!
- Make your life even easier and check out these great Thanksgiving activities at varying levels!
Did you have so much fun that you want to do it again? Then check out the Halloween and Christmas ideas for using felt!
Happy Thanksgiving!