DIY Flannel Board

11 Feb

When I was younger, my mom had a “Family Night” box she used to keep lessons and activities in. I remember she used to tell us scripture stories using a large flannel board and individual flannel pieced figurines of scripture people and places. As it turns out, this little DIY Flannel Board project is not hard to do! So I decided to make some “quiet activities” for my toddler to play with during church. Then I found Pamela Donnis over at Keeping Life Creative makes downloadable felt figures, and she had a really adorable set of the bible story of The Creation of the Earth. On her blog, she uses her story set as a magnetic game, but I’m going to show you how I made it into a flannel board story for my girl.

What you’ll need:

Felt Squares- I used 1 square for the board and 5 squares for the story pieces. However, because this is a downloadable story really you can print it in any size you want- enlarge or shrink it for your needs.
Iron-On T-Shirt Transfer ($12 for 5 sheets at Wal-mart. I’ve used both the “Dark T-Shirt Fabric” kind and the “Light Fabric” kind and I prefer the dark fabric one. It will allow you to use whatever color felt you have handy, where as if you use the light fabric kind, you are pretty much stuck with white felt.)
Velcro Envelope

And then of course if you want to get technical, I also needed an iron and a printer.

Once I printed out the story onto my fabric transfer sheets, I ironed them onto my felt squares. Let it cool before you try to peel off the transfer paper. I cut around the figures. Next, using adhesive spray, I glued a felt square to the front of a Velcro Envelope. This created both storage and a hard surface board for playing on.

Stick your story pieces inside and tuck it away for church. You can also print out the scripture verses of the story to go along with the pieces, but my child is too young for reading yet. Jolene loves this! She calls it her “puzzle” haha. Because it fits in an 8.5×11 envelope, it’s easy to carry with us when I need her to sit still and distracted fro a while. With it being done as a flannel board story, she can bump her legs or move seats and the pieces stay on the felt square.

In case you missed the link above, get your download from Pamela Donnis here. A little shout out to Pamela since I am a fan, she also has a web store where you can buy other stories- both biblical and not- for more flannel board fun. This one of The Creation, is free to her readers.