Flannel Friday: Birthday Cake Makeover

You know that Maya Angelou quote about doing better when you know better? Now that I know how important variety is for supporting math talk and building vocabulary, I can’t help but give my old flannels a makeover!

In honor of my recent birthday, here are my new and improved Cake Candles:

You can see the old version by clicking here.

My new candles feature much more variety. In addition to being different colors, the candles are also different lengths and have different patterns. I pass out candles to the kiddos AND grown-ups. While everyone waits for their candle, I encourage the caregivers to talk with their child about SOME of the following prompts:

• How are your candles the same?
• How are they different?
• Whose candle is taller?
• Whose candle is shorter?
• Which candle do you think would burn down the fastest? Why?
• What colors are your candle?
• Does your candle have a pattern?
• Can you find that pattern somewhere in the room?

After the group had a chance to talk about their candles, I sang this song:

If You Have a Birthday Candle

Tune of “Mary Wore Her Red Dress”

If you have a striped candle, striped candle, striped candle.

If you have a striped candle, put it on the cake!

(repeat with other features – e.g. patterns, colors, height, etc.)

_______

Credit: original

After everyone put their candles on the cake, we counted how many we had. We had 16 that day, but I turned 30, so we needed to add more! The kiddos helped me count up from 16 to 30, then we blew them all out. We had to take a REALLY big deep breath because 30 is A LOT of candles!

Click here to see this flannel in storytime action.