Teaching Positional Words with a DIY Felt Board and Cutouts

Prepositional and positional language forms the backbone of early geometry instruction in Australian classrooms. From Foundation through Year 2, the Australian Curriculum: Mathematics expects learners to describe location and movement using terms such as "above," "below," "between," and "next to." A handmade felt board gives teachers and parents a tactile surface where these abstract descriptors become visible and repeatable.

A felt board costs very little to assemble, can fold flat into a teacher satchel or homeschool tote, and travels easily to Saturday craft sessions at local libraries in cities like Perth, Adelaide, or Hobart. The setup pairs neatly with manipulatives you may already own, and the activity scales from a single child at the kitchen bench to a group rotation in a Brisbane prep room.

What makes the felt board especially effective is the way it marries language, fine motor control, and spatial reasoning in one workspace. Children position, slide, and rearrange cutouts while narrating each move aloud, building the verbal fluency that supports later work with maps, coding, and written directions.

Why positional words belong in early numeracy

The Foundation year of the Australian Curriculum treats position as a key strand of mathematical thinking. Students are asked to give and follow directions, interpret simple maps, and describe the location of objects relative to one another. Teachers in Sydney, Melbourne, and Darwin classrooms often find that children who struggle with left-right distinctions or prepositions like "behind" and "in front of" also stumble when reading diagrams or solving word problems later on.

Hands-on practice with felt cutouts lets learners test each phrase immediately. A teacher can place a paper koala "under" the rainbow, then move it "beside" the rainbow, asking students to describe the change. This kind of quick repositioning reinforces vocabulary far better than a worksheet, and it aligns with the play-based principles promoted in the Early Years Learning Framework.

Parents running homeschool routines in regional New South Wales or the ACT can weave the same activity into morning circle time. Because felt sticks to felt without glue or tape, children can experiment freely, correct their own mistakes, and build confidence with directional language at their own pace.

Building the board and cutouts

A sturdy felt board starts with a piece of stiff cardboard, foam core, or a repurposed clipframe roughly 60 by 45 centimetres. Cover the surface with a single sheet of craft felt, pulling it taut and stapling or hot-gluing the edges to the back. For portability, hinge two boards together with strong tape so the piece folds like a book and slips into a teacher bag.

Cutouts can be drawn freehand or traced from templates. Shapes that work especially well for positional activities include a sun, a tree, a house, a river, and native animals such as an emu, wombat, or kookaburra. Keep a few duplicates in different colours so children can practise pairs like "the blue fish is between the two rocks." A small drawstring bag keeps the pieces together between lessons and is easy to toss into a beach bag for a weekend activity at home.

Storage matters in Australian classrooms where shared resource cupboards tend to be compact. Labelling a felt pocket folder with the activity name lets relief teachers and parent volunteers set the station up in seconds, which is helpful in schools that run rotating literacy and numeracy blocks throughout the day.

Sequencing the activity step by step

Begin with a quick warm-up. Place three cutouts on the board and ask a student to put one "next to" the tree, then move it "behind" the tree. Repeat with different children so every learner hears and produces the target words.

Move into a guided practice phase where the teacher models two-step instructions, such as "Place the boat above the bridge, then slide the bird between the two clouds." Children take turns following and giving instructions, which develops both receptive and expressive language. Working in pairs encourages quieter students, a useful approach in many Australian primary schools where EAL/D learners make up a significant share of the class.

Finish with a short independent task. Give each child a small scene card showing a target arrangement, and ask them to recreate it on the board using the felt pieces. You can extend the activity by inviting learners to invent their own scenes and challenge a partner to copy them, which reinforces careful observation and precise vocabulary.

Cross-curricular extensions

Once children are confident with basic positional terms, the felt board becomes a springboard into other learning areas. In Science, the same setup works for sorting animals by habitat, exploring life cycles, or demonstrating simple cause-and-effect sequences. Teachers looking for sound-related extensions often pair tactile vocabulary activities with hands-on listening stations; you can find one well-loved option in Roylco's tuning forks and chimes collection, which fits neatly into a sensory corner of a Foundation classroom.

In HASS and Geography, the board doubles as a simple map. Children position landmarks, roads, and natural features while describing them with positional language, mirroring the map-reading skills expected in Year 1. For an art link, students design their own cutout sets, practising scissor skills and pattern making along the way.

Numeracy integration is also natural. Positional games that ask "how many pieces are between the sun and the house?" lead smoothly into counting, comparison, and early part-part-whole reasoning, which connects to activities like Roylco's part-part-whole mats used widely in Year 1 and Year 2 classrooms across Victoria and Queensland.

Adapting for diverse learners and settings

The felt board format is highly adaptable. For students with sensory or fine-motor needs, use larger cutouts with thicker felt and add textured trims such as Velcro dots for easier gripping. Visual learners benefit from colour-coding each positional word and printing a small legend card that stays at the station.

In remote community schools and distance education programs, the board travels well in a postage tube and can be mailed to families along with a printed lesson outline. Many teachers in the Northern Territory and far-west NSW have shared how mailed craft kits keep home-school partnerships active during the wet season or harvest breaks.

Outdoor classrooms and nature programs can take the concept further by laying hessian or wool blankets on the grass and using leaves, sticks, and stones as natural cutouts. Children describe where each item sits in relation to others, then photograph the scene to record vocabulary in a digital journal that families can revisit throughout the year.