My husband put on “Gettin’ Jiggy with It” by Will Smith, but you are welcome to use any kind of music.  Perhaps classical or perhaps something upbeat or just whatever music you want to put on.  Leave a piece of paper in front of your child with some art supplies and let them draw what comes to mind while listening to this song.

This activity was supposed to be for my 22 month old, but I guess he is not too interested in art.  He colored for about 10 seconds and then thought it was hilarious when he put his toy trains on his coloring on his paper.

So we let his big sister Esmeralda finish his coloring for him.  What you see at the top is what she drew for “Gettin’ Jiggy with It.”

Have fun!

The post Drawing to Music appeared first on Home Learning Journey.

I had a bunch of mosaic tiles that we have zero plans for.  I needed something super quick for my 4 year old to do since we have not done anything fun like this in a long time because until Isabella (1 month old) is a little older, it is hard to do sit down arts, crafts, and activities with Esmeralda when I am also taking care of my 22 month old boy. So here it is, our quick bottle fun made into a rolling rainbow!

We have a bunch of extra water bottles that we can recycle lying around, so I decided to just let her put as any mosaic tiles as she wanted inside a water bottle she filled by herself with tap water from the bathroom sink.

This required very great fine motor skills, as she had to pick up the small mosaic tiles all on her own from a smooth surface.  Sometimes it was difficult when they would slide across the surface while she was picking them up.  Nevertheless, she accomplished her task and piled them all into the bottle of water.

At first she just wanted to shake it all up and tip it upside down and back right up again and just watch them all.  However, she quickly found that it was more fun rolling them across the table to me.  The mosaic tiles moved like crazy inside, and she quickly called it a rainbow because of the various colors she put inside.

Something so simple can be so fun!  It is a great way to practice fine motor skills, color recognition, and just a great way to have fun rolling it back and forth from one another.

The post Quick Bottle Fun: Rolling Rainbow appeared first on Home Learning Journey.

Baby massages are great and not something I tried with my other two.  It’s a complete total sensory experience for your baby that almost guarantees they will be tired and relaxed enough to fall asleep afterward.  Not to mention, it is a great way for parent/baby bonding!

1. First give your baby a bath so they are warm and clean.
2. In the bathroom, or in another warm room, take your naked baby and lay them on a towel with your coconut oil on hand next to you.
3. Take the coconut oil and start massaging your baby!  You can look online for specific techniques, but I choose to go with feels natural as I go.  My baby certainly liked it.
4. Feed your baby and (hopefully) watch them fall asleep.

Besides the sensory and bonding experiencing, that are plenty of benefits to baby massages, such as babies who have gas issues.  It helps move that gas around to relieve some of the pain or discomfort your baby may have from gas.  My first two had issues with this, and I wish I had done it with them.  So far Isabella does not have this problem, but I like that it would help if she did.

I do not know about anyone else but who would not love this kind of treatment?  Sometimes I wish I was a baby.

The post Baby Massage appeared first on Home Learning Journey.

If anyone is still out there, I thank you for sticking with me.  I will be back regularly starting Wednesday the 13th when my sweet baby girl is one month old.  However, things will be a bit different and over the next several weeks you will see some changes.  I have decided to take a break for the rest of the “school year” in terms of curriculum, as we pretty much stopped with Letter O and have not done a single thing in regards to the curriculum since then.  Instead I am just going to post weekly with things each of my three kids and I have done on our learning journeys.  You will also see some family fun activities every couple of weeks too.  Summer will bring us something even different.  By fall, my sweet little girl will be 6 months old and things should be a lot smoother around here in terms of routines and day to day life, so things will be a little less chaotic by then.

The post Back to Reality appeared first on Home Learning Journey.

Hello Home Learning Journey readers.  I am happy to be here to help Kendall out while taking time to prepare or care for her new baby.  I would love to share with you one of our favorite things to do, paint.

We love to paint at my house as most kids do.  I love finding edible foods for them to paint with.  This is great because my toddler loves to put everything in his mouth!  It is also a great sensory play activity to paint with food.  For this day we chose yogurt.  The yogurt had a fun color and great smell..  And of course a yummy taste.  Both my kids had lots of fun.

What we used: store bought yogurt, spoons, and paper.

What we did:  set out paper (thick paper is better) and yogurt and let the kids paint.

The yogurt is a great sensory substance for smell, touch, taste, and sight.  The kids love exploring the texture and the taste of the yogurt.  I enjoyed watching them as they played or painted.

Little brothers finally yogurt painting.

I had to add this picture so you could see how much fun my little guy had.  Caution, this is messy play but remember it is also so much fun.  We hope you can have fun trying edible yogurt painting if you have not already.  We also hope you and your family will enjoy it as much as ours.

Jaime is an everyday stay at home southern mommy to 3 boys.  Ages range from 4yr to a few months.  She enjoys finding fun activities, crafts… for her and her boys to do.  Learning a little along the way.  She then enjoys sharing what they have found to be fun with others at her blog Frogs and Snails and Puppy Dog Tails.

The post Guest Post: Simple Fun – Paint with Yogurt appeared first on Home Learning Journey.

There are so many great date ideas for busy moms to date their husbands.  I have one that I hope is unique for you!

GO BACK IN TIME!

Recreate the first date you and your husband went on.  This time there will not be any awkward or shy moments.  This is not to replace the memory of that first date but instead, look back at the beginning and remember all of those moments when you felt those butterflies or those nerves swimming around in your stomach.  This is to remember the beginning and to maybe take the opportunity during or after the date to just go over some of your favorite memories while dating throughout how long it has been since that very first one.

My husband and I are high school sweethearts.  We first started dating when we were 17 years old and are now married and will both be 25 this July.  I remember our first date very clearly and cannot wait to recreate the first date with my husband.

We went and saw the movie Zathura.  It is like a space themed Jumanji movie.  I was super embarrassed because when I get nervous, I get really bad stomach cramps.  He was holding my hand throughout the movie, and I am pretty sure he could tell I was super uncomfortable.  Thank goodness he loves me anyway!  We ate popcorn, shared a soda (wow, we shared even then!), and enjoyed the movie together.  On the way dropping him off at home, I was even more embarrassed when I accidentally forgot to get out of “right hand must exit” lane and ended up going straight and running over median/island curb thing that separates the lanes.  Oh my gosh, seriously embarrassing!  I promise I am a better driver now.

Even to this day, our favorite date night when we have the rare opportunity to go out, is still to go out to eat for dinner, see a movie, and share popcorn and soda!  I know it is not the healthiest thing, but it is our treat to ourselves.  We love that time together!

My plans to recreate our first date will be done at home during my husband’s next five days off, somewhere between February 22-February 26.  I would love to do it for Valentine’s Day, but we will both be in the hospital, as I am having my c-section for our third child on February 13.  We will rent the movie Zathura, or buy it if no one is renting it, and sit at home with some popcorn and a soda, as well as reminisce about the “old days” from when we were younger, before we were married, and before kids.

Let me also apologize that this post is not as picture filled as I had hoped.  I have been running into many issues here at the end of my pregnancy that has prevented me from making this basic post into a really great post.  I really wanted to include pictures of us at 17 years of age when we were first starting to date to help catch the “think about the memories after all this time” theme of this post, but I just have not been able to get into the closet to grab my disc of pictures that has all the pictures from before 2009 on it.  I hope you get the idea anyway!

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This 14 day blog hop is brought to you by many mom bloggers in hopes of giving you simple and fun date ideas for busy mamas and their husbands!

Kids Activities Blog, My Nearest And Dearest, Pleasantest Thing, Play Dr Mom, Glittering Muffins, Inspired By Family Mag, Mama Miss, Life At The Zoo, Toddling Into Madness, Sense of Wonder, Educators Spin on It, Little Aritsits, Home Learning Journey, Frogs And Snails and Puppy dog Tails, Pragmatic Mom, The Good Long Road, Mamas Like Me, Kids Stuff World , Toddler Approved and Adventures in Mommydom

Do not forget to check out all of the other posts on the linky to see what other busy mamas are doing to date their husbands!  You can also click the image at the top or here to visit the landing page that includes all of the bloggers listed above.

The post 14 Days of Busy Mamas Dating Their Husband: Date Ideas, Activities & Traditions appeared first on Home Learning Journey.

Deirdre Smith writes/owns JDaniel4’s Mom. After twenty years as a elementary school and technology resource teacher in Northern Virginia, she became a stay at home mom in upstate South Carolina. Her blog features ways she and her 4 year old are exploring learning, crafting, creating healthy meals and living life to its fullest.

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Every Groundhog’s Day we wait eagerly to see if a groundhog in  Puxsutawney Pennsylvania named Phil will see his shadow. Shadows or silhouettes are not only good predictors of the weather they are great for working on visual discrimination skills and picture clues.

Recently my son and I worked with a groundhog and other animal shadows creating an animals shadow activity using an egg carton painted to replicated a piece of ground filled with animal burrows, animal stick puppets and some animal shadow cards.

I created the animals for the puppets and created shadows of the animals using construction paper and magic markers. I cut out the shapes of the animals and their shadows at the same time by layering a piece of black paper behind each piece of colored construction paper I needed for the each animal.

How did we play the game?

Then we took the puppets out of their stand and matched them to their shadow cards. We had fun making the puppets try to squeeze into another animals shadows. It opened up a discussion on how each shadow is unique and just what makes each shadow unique.

The post Guest Post: Groundhog’s Day – Animal Stick Puppets appeared first on Home Learning Journey.

In this week’s addition for my tiny tot, you will find a bedtime book, gross motor skills, fun after nap-time activity, a song, and a coloring activity! Look below to see what we have for you!

Bedtime Reading:

This week’s bedtime story was another Dr. Seuss book called If I Ran the Zoo. My 20 month old tot enjoyed this book mostly for the way the story flowed when you read it aloud and also for the pictures!  My daughter who turns 4 in a couple of weeks also enjoyed reading it with us.  She got a kick out of all the funny words and names inside the story.  She called it “silly.”  I found both of them picking it up throughout the day to flip through the pages during the week.

Gross Motor Skills:

Little man is still enjoying playing with balls, though I did decide to pick up and put away the ball pit and the balls that go with it.  Being two weeks away from the c-section, it has gotten really hard to get down and help the kids pick up all their balls and put them in the ball pit!  I will bring it back out after I heal from the c-section.  However, I did leave the bigger balls out.  Sister and brother played balls together, we all three played together, and even just brother and I played together.  My tiny tot is starting to throw with an overhand and is starting to be able to catch the ball when you throw it to him too.  Of course this is done at a short distance and softly so that he has time to visually prepare how to catch the ball.

After Nap Activity:

This week we have been practicing our nesting and stacking skills!  My tiny tot got some stacking toy cups for Christmas, so we used those cups to put them inside one another from big to smallest.  He loves this activity!  He does not do it correctly all of the time and makes mistakes as he goes, but he is improving and learning while having fun!  We also turned the cups upside down biggest to smallest to make a tower!

A Song:

We have been listening and watching a YouTube video called “I Can Sing a Rainbow.”  I like that it has the colors in it, and it kept both my tiny tot and my almost 4 year old entertained.  After it was over each day, I would let them both pick clips of their own choosing at the end, and we had fun listening to and watching even more songs!

Arts/Crafts:

My tiny tot is not into coloring as much as his sister is, but he does like to be involved.  I gave him blue, green, and orange colored pencils so we could talk about some of the colors while he was drawing on his piece of paper.  Apparently he does not like green, as he only wanted to color with orange and blue.

This week was a little more low-key, but I am thinking my tiny tot is going through a growth spurt, as he is sleeping a lot and acting pretty fussy all week.  Hopefully next week we will have more!

The post Tiny Tot Journey: Week 5 – If I Ran the Zoo appeared first on Home Learning Journey.

Basically you just take a styrofoam ball, some scrap pieces of fabric, and some fabric glue or any other better way to attach the fabric vs. staples like I did, ha ha.  My daughter wanted a face on hers, so I also grabbed as Sharpie and just made one cute small face for her.

We will make better ones for other things later down the road after mom has a chance to get to the store to get the better supplies for it.  We are two weeks to the day away from the c-section so the thought of getting up and walking in the store to browse the aisles for supplies has totally turned me off.  That also explains the lack of posts.  I am not ditching you all, I promise!

The post DIY Fabric Octopus appeared first on Home Learning Journey.

Each week, I will feature five posts that were linked to the previous week’s Kid’s Co-Op linky to share with you!

1. Frogs & Snails & Puppy Dog Tails brings us a really fun and easy winter themed bath to have fun with your kids during this season.
2. These Valentine’s arts ‘n crafts for toddlers from Seeking Shade is perfect for the upcoming Valentine’s Day holiday!
3. Life with Moore Babies gives us a great post on learning about fire for her F is for Fireman post!
4. I am really into penguins when it comes to the winter, so when I saw this preschool penguin unit from The Freckled Homeschooler, I knew I wanted to feature it and share it all with you.
5. Mummy Musings & Mayhem brings us a lot of fun with this fine motor sponge fun post!

Before ending this post, I wanted to take a selfish moment to feature my ABC series of raising toddlers one last time just in case any of you have missed it!  All five posts containing the letters A-Z about raising toddlers can be found on my category page here.

Be sure to check out these awesome posts and link up to the current roundup below!

The post The Weekly Kid’s Co-Op 1/24 appeared first on Home Learning Journey.