Play Time: Baby's Story Board

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On one of the many parenting websites I follow, {Yes, I'm that first-time mamma!} it suggested constructing a felt story board for baby to play with. The author explained that learning to add and remove felt shapes from a board would exercise baby's pincer reflex, help him work on recognize shapes and objects, and allow some fun, pretend play. 

I was a little skeptical at first because Mister M. has two spirits in that little body and hardly sits still for ten seconds, but I thought that it was worth and try. Not to mention I wanted to get rid of a few pieces from  my ginormous pile of felt. 

I decided to attempt free hand drawing a few animal faces as patterns. Lucky for you those pictures were burned in a mysterious fire and I was able to convince Hubster to draw some instead. He's the real only artist in the family anyway. 

I broke out my scissors, pins, hot glue, and got to work.

The pictures are pretty self explanatory but here is a brief description:

First, I cut out my paper pattern on the biggest shape. For the frog this was the head. Then I pinned it to my base color {green} and cut that out. Then I cut the paper pattern again on the next shape - the outside of the eye. I pinned this to the appropriate color - white - and cut it out. I repeated the pattern for the smallest shape, and ended up with a blue eyed frog all pinned together and ready to glue. After gluing all the layers together, I used a Sharpie to add some details! Once it was complete I tested some of the glue to make sure my little slobber monster couldn't chew any pieces off and decided to add a stitch over each eye just to be safe. {I also stitched over the noses and ears of the other animals.} 

We ended up with a fine looking zoo!

 

 Amazingly enough, when I set up the story board for Mr. M. he went crazy and played with his furry friends for an entire 8 minutes. I timed him! Hopefully we'll get some more animal friends soon but for now he loves to grab the animals off the board, give them kisses, wad them into balls, and them put them back on the board. I guess those experts know what they're talking about!

If you want to use my patterns to create your own felt animal zoo click 

Here {For the monkey and elephant}

and Here {for the deer and frog}.

Hugs,

            Erin Kay

My little guy loves monkeys and frogs. What animals does your little love most?

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POST EDIT: For the actual board part of the story board, my original plan had been to attach a piece of felt to a foam board but since Mister M is in the standing/cruising stage and loves to climb on everything, I decided to attach two strips of elastic to my felt and slip it over a couch cushion. This way Mister M won't crack the story board or his head when he tries to attach himself to his animals!