Flannel Friday: Keep Calm & Use Clip Art

Happy Flannel Friday! On a Sunday. Because sometimes the stars don’t align and let you post on time… which is relevant to my PSA today:

Making flannels can be a super time-intensive labor of love. My recent Mouse House makeover took more than three hours!

And that’s okay! Sometimes I just keep calm and carry on with clip art.

Besides saving time, professional clip art usually looks better than anything I could freehand on my own. I also feel fine letting the kids play with it after storytime, as they always want to do. If a clip art piece gets ripped or lost, no big deal, because it’s so easy to replace.

Here’s some new sets fresh from the printer:

Duck/Truck Hiding Game

This is a remake of my old Duck/Truck hiding game. In the old version, I had the exact same size pickup trucks, just in various colors. This new flannel (with many different colors, sizes, AND types of trucks) has many more opportunities for math talk and building vocabulary!

Here’s some options to explore before or after playing the game:

What color is this truck?
- Expand upon the answer: Yes, the garbage truck is green. Maybe it’s a recycle truck! When a trash can is green or blue, that usually means it’s for recycling.
Have you ever seen a fire truck before? Turn and tell your grown up!
How are these trucks the same? How are they different?
Which truck is the longest?
Which truck is the loudest?
Which truck has the most wheels?

Then we chant and play a rhyming guessing game, such as:

Little Duck

Little duck, little duck,

Are you behind the pickup truck?

(repeat with other truck types)

_____

Credit: adapted from Mouse House rhyme

Pattern: clip art from LittleRed

Or…

My Friend Duck

My friend duck

Is hiding behind a truck!

Is my friend duck

Behind the garbage truck?

(repeat rhyme with other trucks until find the duck)

_____

Credit: Storytime Sparks

Pattern: clip art from LittleRed

Race Cars

This set, with all the detail on the cars and the darling drivers, would take FOREVER to make a flannel version. Printing and cutting and attaching velcro took me less than half an hour!

I LOVE the everyday racial diversity (and even diverse ages) in this set, which I added by recoloring the clip art. The store also sells just race cars, but I really wanted to include female drivers. Inevitably someone in storytime says something like “Race cars are for boys…”

Giving us the opportunity to have a nice little discussion about how race cars are for everyone. Boys, girls, unicorns, whoever, whatever.

ANYWAYS, I plan on making a bigger track and adding names to the cars. Currently my track has room for six cars. Ideally I’d like to have a 12 car track. This would give us a lot of options for how many cars to start and end with.

Here’s how we used these cuties this week in a counting up song:

One Driver Went Out to Race

Tune of “Five Little Ducks”

One driver went out to race

Round the track on a sunny day.

She had such ENORMOUS fun,

She called for another driver to come!

BEEP BEEP BEEP!

(repeat and count up)

Six drivers went out to race

Round the track on a sunny day.

They had such ENORMOUS fun,

They raced until the day was done!

_____

Credit: adapted from “One Elephant Went Out to Play”

Pattern: clip art from LittleRed

How do I get the pieces to stick?

I always print onto cardstock for durability. I used to laminate as well, but this creates a glare and can make the images hard to see for my people sitting at the wrong angle, so I stopped laminating. Also when you laminate, you have to do some extra work and use sandpaper on the back, so that the velcro dots or felt will stick.

To get the cardstock to stick onto the flannel board, I either glue felt onto the back or attach velcro dots. You don’t need the hook AND loop Velcro sets – the flannel board itself is half the attachment. You just need the hook side.

Where do I find clip art for flannel sets?

I firmly believe using a high-quality flannel is just as important as reading a high-quality book in storytime. Therefore it’s important to me that if I do use clip art, the images are visually consistent and high-resolution.

More often than not, this means buying clip art.

When you think about the time and money you spend on flannel materials, it’s really not more expensive to buy clip art! Make sure to read through each individual artist’s Terms of Use, but in GENERAL…

Most artists (especially those that sell on Teachers Pay Teachers) are fine with clip art being used for educational, personal and even limited commercial use.
You usually cannot share or sell without AT LEAST crediting the artist. Some artists require a special license to sell products that use their art.
You can pretty much never redistribute the art as is. For example, you couldn’t share the clip art patterns to Flannel Friday. You also couldn’t make flannels based on the clip art and sell them on Etsy.

If you’re unsure, reach out to the seller and ask them if it’s okay to use the clip art in the way you intend.

Here’s some of my favorite artists to buy beautiful clip art from:

Ashley Hughes

Canva