SNAP Storytime at Home: Blue Square House
Today’s post is all about our favorite flannel song, “Blue Square House.”
Welcome to a special edition of SNAP Storytime at Home!
SNAP refers to Special Needs and Autism-Friendly Programming, a category which includes a selection of specialty programs for a very important audience. Keep reading to learn how this flannel song can be used as a calming activity, and learn how to make your own “Blue Square House” at home.
Calming activities help soothe children (and adults!) by providing sensory input. These activities also help with self-regulation and may assist in reducing stress levels due to overstimulation. Calming activities include (but are by no means limited to) breathing and stretching exercises, movement activities, and listening to music.
“Blue Square House” is a combination of a movement and music sensory calming activity. Simply feeling the felt pieces and singing along can have a grounding and calming effect. You can also add in movement by asking your child to place the felt pieces on the flannel board as you sing about each piece.
Supplies
- Felt in these colors: blue, green, red, orange, yellow and white
- Scissors
- Permanent marker
- Optional: flannel board – learn how to make a flannel board in Episode 54 of Library Make
You can use construction paper or fabric if you don’t have felt available
Instructions
- Place all of your flannel pieces on the table
- Using the marker, draw a square on the piece of blue felt
- The square will be the house, so it should be large enough to fit a door piece and a roof piece
- Cut out the square of blue felt
- Draw a small rectangle on the green piece of felt
- This will be your house’s door
- Cut out the rectangle of green felt
- Draw a triangle on the red felt
- This will be your house’s roof
- Cut out the triangle of red felt
- Draw a circle on the orange felt
- This will be your sun
- Cut out the circle of orange felt
- Draw a star on the yellow felt
- This will be your star
- Cut out the star of yellow felt
- Draw a white crescent
- This will be your crescent moon
- Cut out the crescent of white felt
- Assemble your pieces!
All together now
I live inside a BLUE square house,
With a GREEN rectangle door.
It has a RED triangle roof,
But look outside there’s more.
In the morning when I wake up,
The sun is in the sky.
A bright and shining ORANGE circle,
Way up high.
And when it’s time to go to bed,
There’s a single YELLOW star,
Beside a big WHITE crescent moon.
Looking down from so, so far.
Shapes and colors
Come with me
Let’s count how many
We can see…
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.
We hope you enjoy your very own Blue Square House! Check back with us next month for more SNAP blog posts.
