Play Mats

We would like to purchase a foam-type mat for our living room. Right now we use a blanket on the floor.
We thought about the "ABC-123 Puzzle Mat"--the foam one where it comes in pieces that you hook together
and it's primary colors with letters and numbers on the pieces.

Does anyone have this? Recommend it?

Or, any other ideas? I got on different websites and it looks like there are a ton of "foam style" pads for "play time."
I just want to make sure it's safe for kids (ie coatings, chemicals, etc.)

Thanks for your replies!

 

I had a puzzle type mat with the letter/number pieces that pop out that I didn't like very much simply because the pieces were never IN it. I bought a solid type puzzle mat that I think I got from Sam's that I liked much better.

 

We got ours from Lowe's...it's just 4 squares that lock together (red, yellow, green, blue), about 2 ft by 2 ft each. We got two sets of them to make it big enough (about a 4 x 8 rectangle) for both of them to play without bonking into one another when they roll or scoot!

 

we covered our living room w/40 great mats from greatmats.com. we bought 20 at first and then went for 20 more. it's awesome and everyone who comes over wants to play!..... each mat is 2 by 2 feet, for around 6 bucks. the cool thing about these mats is they come w/borders, so they look better than most of the other ones that we looked into.

gl!

 

QUOTE(happychck @ Feb 22 2009, 11:57 PM) [snapback]1200999[/snapback]
we covered our living room w/40 great mats from greatmats.com. we bought 20 at first and then went for 20 more. it's awesome and everyone who comes over wants to play!..... each mat is 2 by 2 feet, for around 6 bucks. the cool thing about these mats is they come w/borders, so they look better than most of the other ones that we looked into.

gl!



happychck: Would you mind showing me, specifically, which ones you purchased? There are so many on there!
I read something, somewhere (you know how that goes) about certain mats having chemicals or something about the "paint"--so I want something that claims to be for kids!
thanks! I'll order as soon as I hear back from you!

 

Louise, looks like happychck got these: http://www.greatmats.com/products/kids-foam-mats.php. They are the only ones on the site for kids with borders. Thanks so much for posting this, Louise... I've been thinking about the letter puzzle ones too, but I know my son would take the letters out! I'll be ordering these too!

 

QUOTE(angelf @ Feb 23 2009, 11:59 AM) [snapback]1201548[/snapback]
Louise, looks like happychck got these: http://www.greatmats.com/products/kids-foam-mats.php. They are the only ones on the site for kids with borders. Thanks so much for posting this, Louise... I've been thinking about the letter puzzle ones too, but I know my son would take the letters out! I'll be ordering these too!



Thank you! Looks like someone (er, me) is lazy and can't figure it out on her own!

Those were the same concerns I had about the puzzle one. We are going to order ours tonight too!
They are starting to crawl and the blanket just isn't cutting it!

 

I just bought one from amazon.com for about $31 including shipping. Its supposed to arrive tomorrow so I haven't tested it yet, but it got great reviews. Their are four 24 inch squares (all blue) and they're 3/4 of an inch thick. I got it more as a safety precaution though, as we have hard tiles in the kitchen, so I'm going to put it on the stair landing in case anyone takes a tumble when they're more mobile. When it gets a little warmer I'll put it outside for play time with a sun shade.

 

I got some at BJs. I agree, don't get the ones with letter and circles and other shapes, they just take them apart and they're a pain to clean.