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.
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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.
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