Bloggy Carnival Giveaway: Story Time Felts

Welcome all of you Bloggy Carnival visitors! If this is your first visit to Katydid and Kid, greetings, salutations, and all that other stuff. And if you are just visiting me, make sure to head to the Bloggy Giveaways Carnival, where hundreds of blogs are linked up with their giveaways this week.

For you K&K newbies, let me tell you a little bit about myself. I'm a mother, a wife, an art teacher (when I'm not staying at home with my 7 month old son), a knitter and fiber artist, a reader, a cook, an appreciator of handmade items, a advocate of eco-friendly living, a huge fan of The White Stripes and Radiohead, a friend of cats and other creatures, a lover of Indian food, and Ok, those things give you a vague idea of me, but for more, please read some of my posts.

If you're here for the giveaway, hold on a bit. I want to tell you a little about Story Time Felts, the sponsor of the giveaway. This is a wonderful company that produces felt boards and visual aids for imaginative and open-ended play. Their products are made in the USA, and the selection of items that they carry is huge, from "paper" dolls (on which you can have your own child's face printed), felt activity books, masks, puppets, and even school-related felts like math, social studies and science.

The Solar System Felt Board Set

Girl Doll Felt Paper Dolls

Gingerbread Boy and 3 Billy Goats Gruff Masks

Fairy Tale Castle Felt Board Set (comes with audio CD)

I had an opportunity to try out the Pirate Island Felt Board set, which I was pretty psyched about, since I love everything pirates. My love of pirates pre-dates that big budget pirate trilogy that shall remain nameless, and I'm hoping my fondness for swashbucklers will translate to my son when he gets older.

When I received the Pirate Island Felt Board in the mail, I was impressed with how many pieces of felt it came with. It seemed endless! There were about 25 characters with funny names like
Eye Patch Al and Castaway Kacie and lots of felt accessories like cannons, treasure, and a motley assortment of pirate regalia. There are even some felt pieces glued onto the board that conceal hidden items like jewels and skulls.
The storyboard felts remind me a little of the Colorforms sets that I adored back in the 1980s. I found that those sorts of toys stimulated my imagination and I played with them for hours. This set is great because it can be used for other activities like a memory game or treasure hunt. It comes with 3 complete lessons for younger children as well as a activity sheets for 23 other learning and play ideas. And according to the Story Time Felts website, you can even take it in the bath, since it's washable.
As you can see in the image above, the Pirate Island set is large, and the pieces are printed with quality inks that sink into the felt, rather than lay on top and crumble away. The board also folds away for storage. And in case you may be confused, the background and the pieces are both made of felt, which lightly sticks to itself and allows little hands to take the pieces off and on as many times as they want, and keeps them from falling off.

Story Time Felts has much more information on ways to utilize their felt for learning and even how you can be a consultant and sell their products.

Story Time Felts has kindly sponsored
a $25 Gift Certificate to their shop!

To enter:

1. Visit Story Time Felts and leave a comment on this post with your favorite product from the site, or what you'd spend the $25 gift certificate on.
2. Make sure your email address is in the comment or is easily accessible via your blog profile or blog itself. I need a way to contact you!
3. For one extra entry, blog about this post and leave a separate comment letting me know
4. For a second extra entry, post my button (code is on my right hand sidebar) on your blog OR subscribe to my newsletter and let me know you've done this in a separate comment .

This giveaway is for US postal addresses only.

You must do the first two things in order to enter ("I want to win, thanks!" comments will NOT be considered). You will have until Saturday November 1st at 11:59pm EST to enter. The winners will be chosen via random number generator the next day and notified by email. I'll also post the winners on my blog. If I don't hear back from the winner by Tuesday at noon, I'll pick another.

Thank you to Karen at Story Time Felts for sponsoring this wonderful, educational giveaway!