My church's Vacation Bible School program finished a week ago. My front room is still awash with homeless felt figures and flannel boards that need to be put away and stored for yet another year. I'm ignoring it, of course, because I've decided that I really need to transfer some of my paper figures to felt.
"Here we go again!" I can hear you rolling your eyeballs at me, you know. Okay, so some eyeball rolling may be justified. I know. I should put my felts away and THEN tackle the job of transferring the paper flannelgraph to felt. Now I'm rolling MY eyeballs at you. Okay? We're even.
If you've been working in Children's ministry in a smaller church setting over the last 40-80 years, you probably remember paper flannelgraph sets. If you were working in the smaller church setting within the last 30 to 40 years, you probably know about the Betty Lukens/Little Folk Visuals Felt systems. If you're a newcomer to Children's Ministry--i.e. you've only been working in it for the last 20 years or less--you're probably saying, "What's flannelgraph?"
You newbies might want to have Wikipedia or Google as extra tabs while you read this.
So. I was the storyteller for my team again this year. I use flannelgraph to tell Bible stories because I am familiar with it--I have, quite literally, been playing with flannelgraph since I was two. I do not remember learning the basic Bible stories...it seems to me that I've always known them. The heroes in the Bible are childhood friends.
Flannelgraph or Felt figures work very well if you are familiar with this media AND with the stories you are telling/teaching. You have to have some organization, though.You can't let the students play with the figures, for example. It helps to have your boards, backgrounds and figures put in order so you can just put them up when it's time for them.
The Felt systems:
The paper flannelgraph is not sold anymore...at least, if it is, I can't find it. When the Betty Lukens and Little Folk Visuals Bible Felt systems came on the market, they ran the others out of business, because of the quality and visibility of their figures, but also because you only needed to buy the one set. Both companies each have a lesson plan book that takes you through the entire Bible in about 3 years, or so. Each lesson shows you photos with sample boards, gives the scripture reference, and lists the figures, backgrounds, and scenery for each story. Most figures are used for more than one story--i.e. the figure for Mary is used for any young mother in the Old or New Testament. You can tell most of the stories without a problem using either system. It isn't perfect. There are some pieces that don't exist, or that you would need more of, in order to tell some stories. For other lessons, it seems that the publishers went hog wild on detailed scenery pieces. There are a bunch of apples (which you have to cut out) just for the tree in Eden, for example. There aren't a lot of crowd pieces and there aren't a lot of soldiers, either. You don't need many of either of these, but you DO need more than one.
If you get a felt system (either Betty Lukens or Little Folk Visuals--they're interchangeable), I would get the 12" figures. The 6" set is not as adaptable--even if you homeschool and mainly use it there, get the big ones. You may only intend to use it at home, but it won't stay that way.
When it says 12" figures, it means that is the length/height of most adult figures in the set, not that all the pieces are 12" big. Remember all the apples I told you about? They're less than a centimeter in diameter in the large set. They're annoyingly small in the 6" set. Also, if you're homeschooling, you may have children in the house who are not yet "school" age. It is more difficult to swallow pieces from the large set.
I have both paper and felt figures. I don't have the complete felt system, I just have the Story of Jesus one. I made it work this year for VBS, but I had to use my paper ones, too. The paper figures are about 6" to 9" long. My backgrounds are from the 12" set.
My VBS site had over 50 children from ages 3 to 13 (I know, right?). We were doing the program in the backyard of someone's home, not on our church campus. We couldn't split them up for crafts, games or storytime. I had to have the visibility. I didn't have the money to order a whole set, nor the time to cut everything out. My church used to have the large set, but it had disappeared.
I took some of the figures I had from Joseph the Dreamer and Joseph in Egypt, (pub. Scripture Press) and ran them through my scanner/copier/printer. I enlarged the pieces to 130% before printing them on paper. Some pieces took several sheets of paper and had to be, literally, cut and pasted together with scissors and glue sticks.
Even if I had had the entire deluxe Bible set, I would have enlarged and used the paper ones anyway. As I said before, the felt sets are not perfect. Neither system has proper figures for the Egyptian stories in Genesis and Exodus. The systems do not have Persian, Assyrian, or Phoenician style figures for the stories in Kings, Esther, and Daniel. The paper sets came in individual stories, so they had the luxury of having semi-period correct pieces--they were just too small for me to use as they were.
I will see what I can do to make the paper ones into felt. I have some ideas, but I haven't had the opportunity to try those ideas out as yet.
