Quiet, Creative Play with Story Time Felts

I have a confession. About a year ago I purchased a large sheet of felt and some smaller sheets with the plan of creating a felt board for my kids. You have probably seen a felt board at the library or in a preschool/kindergarten classroom. Felt shapes cling to a larger felt background. They’re great for telling stories and are a fantastic way to promote creative play. My felt is still sitting in the original bag it came home in. Sigh.

Lucky for me, I’ve been following the fantastic Karen Clark of FunFelt.com (an independent sales rep with Story Time Felts) for a long time.  I love her blog, Fun Activities for Kids, Families, and Teachers. She blogs about just the kinds of creative activities I enjoy doing with my own kids. And most of them don’t require cutting out little felt shapes (what was I thinking?). Karen recently sent me the Down on the Farm Felt Activity Book from Story Time Felts to try out with my kids and review.

The Down on the Farm Activity Book has 5 pages, each with a different farm scene. Some of the pages have cut-outs that open (similar to a lift-a-flap book) to reveal pictures behind them. My favorite page is the inside of the barn. There are different gates and a cage that open to reveal various baby animals, including some oh-so-cute bunnies. You can place some of the felt shapes behind the gates as well for some hide-and-seek fun. The book comes with more than 50 felt pieces, including people, animals, and farm equipment/supplies. It’s almost overwhelming how many pieces there are. As an added benefit, the pieces can be stored in pockets in each page of the book.

My kids were delighted by the book and immediately started pawing through the felt shapes and peeking behind flaps. LadyBug (at 2) was most interested in looking at the animals and playing with the flaps. I was able to engage Bug (3.5) in some simple storytelling using the the various characters. With the book open, there was room for both kids to play, but I might consider unbinding it so they could have a little more room to spread out (and avoid arguments over who gets which character).

The felt activity books are nice for rest times, car travel and hotel play. The built-in storage is wonderful, although I’d personally prefer an attached pouch for storage because the book gets very puffy if there are too many pieces stored in any one spot. These would make fantastic gifts rather than the same-old plastic commercial offerings. My one recommendation is to shell out the extra $ to have the book pre-assembled. Cutting out and gluing the book together is not my idea of a good time and I doubt it will be yours!

You can see the full range of Story Time Felt offerings on Karen’s personal website: FunFelt.com.

Disclosure: We received free product in order for me to write a useful review. We received no compensation and there were no promises made as to the content of this review. All opinions stated are mine.

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