Mom Approved: The Learning Journey

Disclaimer: I received products to review. All opinions are my own.

We are getting ready to start another school year at Owl Creek Academy, but our learning never stops in the summer. What I like to do during the summer is find games and toys that are educational and new to them to keep them engaged in the summer. That also gives me a chance to see how well that product will work for them as a supplement during the school year. It has worked well for us the past few years. The two items that The Learning Journey sent us are perfect and will work perfectly for this school year, where we will have a preschooler and first grader.

Telly The Teaching Time Clock

This little guy is awesome. Telling time is something we are still working with our oldest on. He is slowly getting it, but with so many digital clocks around, it is near impossible to force him looking at an analog clock. We haven't even started with our youngest. Telly The Teaching Time Clock has amazing features to make learning time easy and fun!

Let Telly The Teaching Time Clock help your child learn to tell both analog and digital time using two quiz modes. In the learning mode, Telly teaches time in five-minute increments when his hands are moved, updating his LCD screen. In the quiz mode, Telly asks your child to move the hands on his face to match the time displayed on his screen. Telly is also a real working clock. Learning to tell time has never been so much fun. Requires three AA batteries (included). Ages 3+ years.

We keep Telly by the kids' door, where their shoes, sunglasses, backpacks and such are. I've been telling them what time we are leaving or starting a new activity to get them looking at it. Each morning I even draw a random time on a dry erase clock that we have. The kids can either tell me when it is that time or tell me what time the clock says for a surprise. Telly is really helping them with this!

Match It! ABCs

This has been an awesome game for Snapper. She loves learning her alphabet but does struggle with it a little more than Tbomb did. Match It! ABCs is something she can do by herself and still learn. When she gets the right match, it excites her so much and we talk about it together after she brings me a pair.

This colorful set of 26 ABC puzzle cards provides children with an excellent introduction to the alphabet. Each card features a picture, the beginning letter (upper and lower case) and the name of the picture. The puzzles are self-correcting as no two puzzle cuts are the same. A fun way to learn the alphabet. Recommended for ages 3+ years.

Though  I wish I'd had this game with Tbomb was first learning letters, he picked them up very easily, so it was not a big deal. With Snapper, I like as many different tools as possible for her to learn with because she is much more hands on and needs the repetitiveness, where as Tbomb, he learns things almost as quickly as you can tell him. Snapper plays this game almost every day and it will be included in her daily letter box this coming year. I highly recommend this game to anyone with small children. There are so many things it teaches at once- letter recognition, upper/ lowercase matching/ sounds, and even hand/ eye coordination. It is definitely a winner.

As we wind down the summer and I am putting finishing touches on the coming school year's plans, I find myself wandering to The Learning Journey more and more and I cannot complain!