June 19th, 2009 Cross blog conversation with Danielle Johnson Posted by Melitsa in Sites to visit, Thought of the week, play activities

I’m happy to introduce you to Danielle Johnson of  MomGiveaways and Daniellesjourney. She has asked me to be part of a cross blog conversation. How exciting! I had heard about cross blog conversations before and was so happy to join in.

What’s a cross blog conversation?

Danielle asks me a question which she did here.  A little time later, I respond to the question on my blog and in turn ask her a question which she replies to at Momgiveaways. So you all get to peek into our conversation. We’ll do this over several days with a cycle of questions and answers.

So you’ll want to watch both blogs to keep up with our conversation.

Danielle asked me,

Melitsa you have a great website for parents of young children!  Can you tell me about what you offer on your website and how you got started?

Thanks Danielle.:)

I have a few things going right now. My first love is the free weekly email of play activities for babies, toddlers, preschoolers and the ‘kindy’ set In one email per week you’ll get a range of activities (fine motor skills, pretend play,physical play etc) using things you can find around the home. Each week is a different variety so you ( the parent) don’t get stuck on doing mostly one thing. I know I still struggle with not just doing my favourites.

I love listening to parenting podcasts so I offer a Carnival of collected favourites of interest to parents once a month. Parents can send in their ideas. I love to spread the word about good play with your kids and information and ideas really empower us all. Also, I play a syndicated channel BAM radio with parenting interviews directly relevant to this Early years time.

I have an ecourse to learn what on earth is a podcast for complete beginners. Also an ebook about a fun play idea for babies- Treasure Baskets.

Just this week we launched a new weekly meme “Rhyme Time” a pretend play& nursery rhyme playtime for toddlers, preschoolers AND their parents.

How I got started

I’m an Air force spouse. We met and married in the UK, where I’m from, while he was stationed overseas. We moved to rural Italy. I had stopped working as a teacher and we started a family. They say teachers can’t stop teaching. I guess that’s true for me. With the language barrier I relied on books being sent to me or the conversations I would have with my mum about what to do with my baby.

Back in 2003, the Internet was dial up and very expensive.  My son soon needed  Early intervention & speech therapy. I loved the games he played. That coupled with new mummy friends we were looking for things to do that didn’t break our very small banks AND that were good play.

My mummy friends happened to have teaching background too….fancy that! We didn’t like all the electronic toys & videos for babies all the time that seemed to be on offer where we were. One now famous baby DVD was new and flying off the shelves. We were seeking a balance. When I did get online I was very interested in how mums were sharing their stories and ideas through message boards and blogging. I felt a connection with people I’d never met but shared similar ideals. I wondered if I could blog and sharing my play journey.

My teacher mummy friends left, like it always happens with military families, and I had new friends. But they were into play in a totally different way.  I knew it was time to reach out to other playful mums.

I knew then that I should blog.

Danielle, I can see you are a busy mom with lots of websites. How did you discover the Internet, blogging, giveaways and think of starting your own business?  and who are your biggest influencers  or people that keep you sane on this journey?

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