DIY Felt Board for Story Retelling

Disclosure: Some of these products were samples provided to me to try. Opinions and the choice to use  are 100% my own! This post contains product links.

First you want to gather your supplies.  You will need to purchase an artist’s canvas in the size that you would like your board to be. Make it big for whole class use, or small for a retelling center, the choice it totally yours 🙂 You will also need to purchase a few yards of fabric in a variety of different colors to make your board and story pieces. I used cut by the yard Kunin Eco-fiPlus™ Premiumfelt which worked perfectly.

Next you will want to choose one color to cover your board with. For this board I decided to use white so that the colors would really pop, but you could really use any color you like. Cut the felt to size, leaving enough extra on all sides to fold over onto the back of the board.

Then you can start to fold the fabric up and over the canvas and staple it onto the backside of the frame.  I used my Paper Pro 30 Sheet Stapler, but you could also use a bigger staple gun if you have one handy as well.

 Continue to pull the felt back over each side, stretching the fabric tight and stapling it down.  I find it best to start in the middle of one side and work towards the outer edge to be sure it doesn’t bunch up.

That’s it! I also purchased a small easel stand to hold the board so that it can stand alone without having to be leaned against a wall. Now the fun part…creating story telling pieces!  I chose a few of my favorite kindergarten must have read alouds to create first.

 I always start retelling with Brown Bear, Brown Bear.  It is such a simple story and students just love feeling successful as they retell it.  In order to create the pieces for this story I used templates I found on Making Learning Fun. You can find TONS of printable templates there for popular stories. You simply print the template, trace the pieces onto felt, cut the pieces out and hot glue them together.  If you are short on time, you can also print the pictures on card stock, laminate and attach velcro dots to the back.  Here are a few other stories I created:

And for October, Five Little Pumpkins. I didn’t even use a template for this one.  I just cut out long and short rectangles to make a fence, round orange pieces for pumpkins, and small brown stems for each one.

Another great option for retelling is nursery rhymes! Most kids are familiar with several of these rhymes, and I found a set of little nursery rhyme readers from Scholastic that are perfect for kindergarten.

 And who doesn’t Love Mrs. Wishy Washy?

 And last but certainly not least…Chicka Chicka Boom Boom! This one was a bit more time consuming to make because I created all of the upper and lowercase letters, but I love that kids can use them to not only retell the story, but also to build their names, sight words and more!

I really hope you enjoyed checking out my latest project, and I would love to know how you use the felt board in your classroom. But wait that’s not all! Enter below to win a stash of creative supplies to get creating for your own classroom!