Giveaway: Develop Storytelling Skills with Moulin Roty's Les Petit Merveilles Nighttime Shadow Puppets from Magicforest

Thank you to Moulin Roty for providing a complimentary product sample for us to base this review upon and for providing an additional product for our giveaway prize.  All opinions expressed are my own.

We love toys that utilize our imaginations, so the 9pc Castle Shadows Nighttime Shadow Puppets by Moulin Roty are right up our alley. This 40-year-old French toy company lets parents and kids create their own stories with these unique and fun shadow puppets.

The puppets are made of black cardstock and come mounted on wooden sticks for play. Once nighttime hits, or if you have a mostly-dark room to use with some sort of backlighting, you can have hours of fun creating, imagining, and playing with these fun shadow puppets. When children engage in pretend play like this, they are building their vocabulary, using problem solving skills, and utilizing social and emotional skills that are vital as they grow and learn. For this reason, these shadow puppets make for a great addition to dramatic play in a classroom or homeschool.

Since these shadow puppets are made of paper, they are not likely to hold up for a long time, but while they do last they are fun. Perhaps storing them in a rigid envelope or case and making sure children aren’t being too rough with them will help to prolong their life. They also have other themes like dinosaurs and even a Paris set. We had a blast creating elaborate stories about dragons, princesses, evil kings, and more.

You can learn more about these and other inspirational toys at www.magicforest.com. These shadow puppet sets retail for $18.50 to $40.00.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Good luck in the drawing!

This giveaway is open to U.S. entries only. You do not need to be a blogger to enter, but you must have a valid email address and be age 18 years or older. A random drawing will be held shortly after the contest closing. The winner will be announced here and will be contacted via email. If the winner does not respond within 48 hours, a new winner will be drawn.

Kindergartner-In-Training: Developing Verbal Skills with Felt Boards

Our 5 year old daughter is quite a good storyteller, although they are a bit lengthy and usually come out in one big run-on sentence.  Her twin brother, however, needs to work on his ability to continue a story with relevant information and on his enunciation.  To help our son further develop these skills, I chose the "Let's Play House" felt board from FunWithFelt.com as the perfect tool.  I actually used a felt board with my older son in a similar activity, but the "Let's Play House" felt board inspires an infinite number of stories, whereas more basic felt boards may cause a child to lose interest after being used 2 or 3 times.

(Click any photo to enlarge)

This particular Learning Fun With Felt set comes with over 20 pre-cut felt pieces to help your child tell his or her story.  All the pieces are common items and people that would be easily recognized by most children and could be incorporated into a story without much difficulty.  There is even a place to write your child's name on the back of the board and a handy reusable carrying case for easy storage and transporting.  You can also use the felt pieces from this set on other felt boards and other felt pieces on this board.

Since we have two preschoolers, we asked them to take turns telling a single story, where one child would start and the other child would pick up where the first child left off.  This activity not only was a good exercise for developing verbal skills, it also taught our twins to have patience and to adapt.  Patience was required for each child to wait for his or her turn, especially if they are anxious to tell the part of the story they have come up with in their head.  Also, sometimes one child found the other's piece of the story to be less than interesting, but he or she still had to listen patiently.  Adaptation came into play when one child did not like where the story was going as told by the other or the turn of events in the story conflicted with what they had intended to add to the story when it was their turn again.  During these instances, the child had to figure out how to change their piece of the story so that he or she could add what they originally wanted, but to have the story still flow and make sense.

By the time our twins were done with their story, there was much disorder in our little felt board house.  They thoroughly enjoyed the activity.  I actually think they liked being able to make this pretend house disorderly since they are always being asked to make things orderly in their real house.  Of course, I had to go back afterwards and put all the felt pieces where they made sense after our children were done playing . . .

To view all the fun felt boards available from Learning Fun With Felt, visit www.funwithfelt.com.  For a limited time, you can receive 20% off your next purchase when you checkout with Code: 3G2S.

Thank you to Learning Fun With Felt for providing a complimentary product sample for us to base this review upon and for providing an additional product for our contest prize.


a Rafflecopter giveaway

Good luck in the drawing!

Silly Monkey Stories: 4 Going On 80

For quite a long time now, our 4-1/2 year old daughter has been telling stories.  There's nothing odd about that, but it's that she starts almost every story with, "When I was a baby . . . "  The weird thing is that some of her stories are true ones, such as "When I was a baby, you gave me a bath in the kitchen sink and I was looking around at everything in the kitchen" or "When I was a baby, I fell down while I was trying to walk and you picked me up."

I don't think she can really remember her toddler years that clearly, but she probably has a great memory (and imagination) and can recall everything we've ever told her about her earlier years.  If she keeps this up though, we're going to have to start calling her Grandma!

Click here to learn how to participate in Silly Monkey Stories.

Click here to read all my Silly Monkey Stories!

If you have a Silly Monkey Story to share, sign Mr. Linky below with the link to your blog post (not the link to your main blog page). Please do not forget to visit the other participants and leave them comments to let them know you stopped by!