Sponsor Giveaway : : Imagine Childhood

It has been a while since I've hosted a giveaway here on the blog, and today felt like just the right time! I visited with Sarah from Imagine Childhood earlier this week and that interview is below.

Sarah is hosting a generous giveaway as well, so read on!

What is your company and how long have you been in business?

"For children, potential is limitless, curiosity is an electrical current, and every moment is open to the possibility of the unexpected. Day-to-day life is filled with adventure. Road blocks are invitations to try new routes. And the world is vast and expansive..." ~ From Imagine Childhood: Exploring the World Through Nature, Imagination, and Play, Roost Books 2012

Childhood is more than just a stage in our path to adulthood, it’s the time in our lives when our imaginations have no limits.  It’s the time when we learn how to be inventors. It’s the time when we watch clouds and butterflies with wonder and admiration.  It’s the time when we fall in love with the world.  Childhood is not just a developmental stage, it’s the development of a perspective, and quite a beautiful one at that.  In 2008 we established ImagineChildhood.com to support and nurture the growth of that perspective.

Imagine Childhood is a family owned and operated company offering high quality environmentally conscious toys, activities and stories that encourage exploration, creativity, and open-ended unstructured play.

What inspired you to go into this line of work?

I feel like the path that has led me to where I am today has been a circular one. Growing up I had always wanted to be involved in primary education in one way or another. To me, teachers were more magical than fairies or elves or wizards.  They looked normal, just like any other adult, but somehow using only their words and a piece of chalk they could transport me to new worlds in an instant. They could expand my mind and my imagination. They could show me the entire universe on a Tuesday afternoon.

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As I grew older, though my love of education never wavered, my college years brought me to a new focus, to the world of art, where I lived for quite a while thereafter.  It actually wasn’t until I worked in exhibition design for the Field Museum of Natural History, that I began to recognize a familiar texture beneath my feet, roots and stones on a path that I’d navigated before.  I wasn’t teaching  per se, but I was beginning to come back to the idea of developing conduits for information, of putting time and care into how ideas could be shared with children. 

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Now in the work that I am doing at Imagine Childhood, in the shop and the blog as well as a new venture into the world of writing, I feel like I’ve come back to where I started, but this time with a completely different perspective. . . one that I could only get from going the long way around.

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How do you believe you and your business are bringing good into the world?

I don’t think it’s a question of bringing good into the world, that’s already there.  What we hope to be doing, is to provide a space that helps put a spotlight on all of that goodness. 

We don’t think of the products we carry in our shop as toys, they are tools for exploration. Objects that might just inspire a child to investigate the world outside their window or the lands inside their imagination, to see the magic in the everyday and to perhaps, one day, share it with others.

What else should we know?

For the past couple of years we’ve been working with the wonderful Roost Books to publish our first book Imagine Childhood: Exploring the World Through Nature, Imagination, and Play which was released last October.  We’re so excited to have it out in the world!

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Congratulations, Sarah!

   

Imagine Childhood is offering a generous $50 gift certificate to their shop and a copy of Sarah's new book, Imagine Childhood. To enter your name simply leave a comment below! I will close comments in about a week.

Comments are now closed! The winnter is Charissa who said:

"Wow! Sounds like a great book and a great little company! What a wonderful idea. :) "

 

Imagine Childhood is also offering each of you a 10% discount from now until 1/31/13.  Simply enter LUSA as the discount code at the time of checkout.