Felt-Board for Storytelling

We have a big trip coming up in about 6 weeks and it involves a loooong plane ride, so I’m starting to think about how to entertain the little munchkins while we’re airborne. One thought was to make a small feltboard that I can use to tell a few stories with, and that the kids can play with independently. We have a feltboard version of the Hungry Caterpillar, but the board is huge so I wanted to come up with something smaller and more carry-on friendly. I will still be able to use the felt pieces from the Eric Carle story, but with my own backdrop.

I already had a piece of white felt that measures about 8″ x 11″ so I decided to use that and just paint it with a landscape that could be used for several different stories. I painted on the felt with watercolor paint – its still wet now but I hope that when it dries the felt will still have the ‘sticky’ quality that will allow the felt story pieces to stick to it. I figured that acrylic paint would create a slick layer on top of the felt that would hinder the sticking.

I’ve got a few ideas for felt-board stories – I’m really excited to start working on ‘Stone Soup’ – but does anyone out there have any suggestions for me?