These pur­ple vio­lets are another project I made with my mother a few years ago. Wilma Flana­gan is clos­ing down her site so her tem­plate is no longer avail­able. For­tu­nately they are pretty easy to copy by eye­balling this photo. Instead of try­ing to cut felt cir­cles, I just glued on foamy cir­cles. I think fin­ger pup­pets work best for “pop­ping,” but the rhyme could easy work with flat vio­lets as well.

Five Pur­ple Violets

One pur­ple vio­let in our gar­den grew
Up popped another, and that made two
Two pur­ple vio­lets were all that I could see
But I found another, and that made three
Three pur­ple vio­lets — if I could find one more,
We’d give them to mother — we’d have four!
Four pur­ple vio­lets — sure as you’re alive!
Why here is another! And now there are five.

The other flan­nel­board activ­ity I like to do with gar­den sto­ry­times is get out a great big piece of flan­nel, all sorts of flower pieces (stems, petals, leaves, some full flower heads, etc.) and let the chil­dren make their own flow­ers. This works best after sto­ry­time proper. I tried it once in the mid­dle of sto­ry­time and it was a bit of a time-consuming and con­fus­ing muddle!

For more Flan­nel Fri­day ideas, search #flan­nel­fri­day on Twit­ter. This week’s round up is hosted by Tracy, @tcy28, 1234 More Sto­ry­times. Links to all past Flan­nel Fri­day posts can be found at So Tomor­row.