Latest stories

A Day in the Life of SoCal Timberdoodlers

By Karla
In A Day in the Life
2 Min Read
A

Shared By:

Christina from SoCal

Meet Our Family:

Hi there! We are SoCal transplants from the DC area.

Little Bean is 3 1/2, Dad is a priest, and Mom is a former touring singer/voice teacher–now stay-at-home mom and household project manager. Our family is not often together, with Dad’s schedule keeping him busy most days/nights, but we do enjoy traveling when we can. Little Bean and Mama love exploring and playing with friends, making lots of music and learning, learning, learning!

Our Morning:

Our mornings begin with breakfast along side our sweet little birdies on the porch. Everyone has fun getting their own favorites and even Little Bean can make her own toast, mix her eggs, add oatmeal mix-ins, and even mix up some pancakes (with the tiniest bit of help from Mama, of course!).

We are a “Waldessori” home and love creative, hands-on learning. One of our current favorite Timberdoodle inspirations is the Three Little Pigs game. So cute!

Our Afternoon:

We do a nice big breakfast so our lunch is more of a healthy snack that we can bring with us on park days, errand days, or fix ourselves at home on slower days. We have varied afternoons, but our favorite is gymnastics!

Our Evening:

Our afternoon makes way for evening playtime before dinner, followed by dinner (and sometimes second dinner for Little Bean when she is growing!).

Games, books, playtime, art, stories, songs pave the way for an evening bath or shower (we have a very, very independent little miss here).

Prayers, snuggles and a nice story or two bring us to sleepy-dreamyland and time for mama to tidy up, do some laundry, plan for tomorrow and brush teeth. Sometime Mama gets to work on her photography class!

Favorite Timberdoodle Tool:

Three Little Pigs! Little Bean has shared this game with friends from 4-8 and everyone really loves it!

More About Our Family:

Our family is a clergy family, which makes us rather different in our schedule. We don’t have family weekends and it can be tricky sometimes to be together, especially during the holidays.

We are also far from family, so Mama works hard to make sweet traditions for Little Bean.

 

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Timberdoodle Story #225

By Karla
In Timberdoodle Stories
1 Min Read
T

Today’s Timberdoodle Story shared by:

L. Cordes of PA

What made you consider Timberdoodle for the first time?

I was looking for tot-school curriculums and had a hard time finding them. But when I stumbled on Timberdoodle, it looked perfect – and it specifically came in Secular!

Before you decided to use Timberdoodle, what was your biggest obstacle or concern about using a Timberdoodle Curriculum Kit?

I’m not doing serious School – we’re doing some educational play and a lot of child directed learning.

What helped you overcome that?

Timberdoodle looked a lot like toys we’d use even if I didn’t like the curriculum packet.

If your friend decided to start homeschooling and felt overwhelmed, what would you tell her?

Start at your own pace – you can’t go wrong.

Is there anything unique about your family that you’d like to share with us?

My mother lives with us – extra adults help with everything! We’re big into arts and crafts.

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Does Timberdoodle Work for Students with Dyslexia?

By Karla
In FAQ, Special Needs and Homeschoolers
2 Min Read
D

It’s a common question around here, and the simple answer is yes! Many children with dyslexia have great success with Timberdoodle Curriculum Kits. Watch the video to find out what customizations we suggest, and why it seems to work so well.

Hope: So, Pearl, the question for today is, does our curriculum work with children who have dyslexia?

Pearl: This is a question I’ve gotten a lot via email and I always say yes, because even though it’s not been specifically designed in all aspects for children with dyslexia, it has many components that will be appealing and helpful for children with dyslexia.

One aspect is that there are so many hands-on components in our curriculum. The child with dyslexia is likely to be frustrated if all of their education is book work. So it’s really helpful to have some hands-on components to break that up.

Another aspect is how many of our components have been designed for children with dyslexia. Not all components, but some. All About Reading, in particular, in grades pre-k through 2nd grade. You can also put in All About Spelling which is not typically part of our curriculum kit, but can be customized in. It’s also great for children with dyslexia.

From there I usually encourage the parents to customize. If they let me know what grade their child is or what types of topics are covering I can help them find audio book versions of Science or History. Sometimes both, depending on the grade.

One last resource I always recommend to parents of children with dyslexia is called TTRS which stands for Touch-Type, Read and Spell. I love this program. It’s really a mash-up of multiple things. It teaches typing. It works on phonics and spelling, although it doesn’t really teach it comprehensively. So if you’re looking for a phonics and spelling program that stands alone, that’s probably not it. But it would be immensely helpful for students with dyslexia because it’s so phonics-based. It’s based on the Orton-Gillingham approach just like All About Learning Press’ materials are.

Hope: All right. Well, thank you, Pearl.

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7 Reasons to Consider Timberdoodle

By Karla
In FAQ, Timberdoodle News
2 Min Read
7

Have you been looking for an amazing curriculum this year? Look no farther!


Here are seven quick reasons to consider Timberdoodle’s comprehensive curriculum kits.

  1. Our curriculum is award-winning. Timberdoodle curriculum kits received first place in Practical Homeschooling’s 2017 and 2018 reader awards. Meanwhile, the individual components of our kits have received countless additional awards.
  2. Hands-on learning. Parents and kids love how Timberdoodle integrates hands-on exploration into our curriculum. Reinforce geography with puzzles. Build a robotic dog or bird. Put together a human body torso or a Roman arch bridge. Now, this is learning that sticks.
  3. STEM skills. Because STEM skills–science, technology, engineering, and math–are all so crucial to real life we have included purposeful STEM activities into every grade from Tiny Tots through high school.
  4. You can customize it. Every kit that Timberdoodle offers is fully customizable so you can adapt it to your unique child without breaking the budget.
  5. The checklist system. Our super simple weekly checklist allows for the unexpected, giving families the freedom to enjoy life without losing momentum in their home schooling assignments.
  6. Independent learning. Timberdoodle handbooks promote self-directed learning so students begin to learn how to manage their own education and schedule. Less hand-holding, more independent learning, is what your student will need for college and beyond.
  7. Works for charter schools. For over a year Timberdoodle has provided kits for every grade which are charter school compatible.

For all these reasons and more you will want to consider Timberdoodle’s curriculum kits today.

Crazy smart homeschooling!

So much fun. And so much learning. All wrapped up in one.

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School Organization Gallery

By Karla
In Tips, Tricks, and Opinions
1 Min Read
S

How do you organize your school materials? Here are some great pictures shared with us on our Facebook page, in our Facebook community group, and on Instagram.

Click on each picture to learn more.

We’d love to add your pictures! Let us know if you post one that we could share, and where we can find it.

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A Day in the Life of Alaska Timberdoodlers

By Karla
In A Day in the Life
4 Min Read
A

Shared By:

Elizabeth of Unalaska, AK

Meet Our Family:

Hi! My name is Beth and I’m a homeschooling mother of four living on the tiny island of Unalaska in the Aleutian Chain, Alaska. We live 900 miles from the nearest large city by boat or by plane but our Timberdoodle orders still find their way to us!

My husband is the network administrator for the city and the pastor of our local church: Unalaska Reformed Church. He’s also an avid adventurer and volcano explorer and we often get to go along for the ride!

Our kids are Hedya, age 10; Jadon, age 8; Nadia, age 7; and Enoch, age 5. We have a husky named Ash and two cats: Doink and our new baby Katmai (after the Alaskan Volcano).

Our Morning:

We always start our morning with devotionals over the breakfast table (almost always cereal and fruit). If that’s the only thing we get done in a day, I’m satisfied, as it’s the most important. God is our fuel, the source of all goodness and love. We need Him most. Right now we’re going through Long Story Short and supplementing with memory verse and catechism songs.

After that, we brush our teeth and get started. We do a word of the day from Marie’s Words and check out the calendar. Then the kids split off to get to work on Math (Teaching Textbooks or Horizons). When the kids finish math, we dive into language arts and then take turns reading with Mom.

Our Afternoon:

As the kids start to finish up their core work (usually youngest to oldest) they are dismissed to their room or outside for some rest and free time. We are lucky to have homeschooling neighbors who often come to play during the day. After the last kiddo is finished and has a break, we meet back up for an hour of chores. Everybody pitches in to keep the house running.

Somewhere in the midst of the chores, I (or one of the girls will if they’re interested) break off and make lunch. We pretty much eat pizza in some form: pizza pasta, pizzadillas, pizza bagels, etc. We eat lunch together and then cozy up on the couch for science and history readings.

We’re working our way through Story of the World 1 and our science this year is Apologia’s Astronomy. I have to say that I love diving deeply into these time periods and subjects and just soaking up all the knowledge. When we’re done reading, the kids will run off and work on their history projects or play with their new science ideas and experiments and we’re officially “done” for the day.

Our Evening:

When school’s “out” we usually head to the park to walk our dog, Ash, play Pokemon Go, and run errands or pick up friends to play. This is their down time with screens allowed and pretty much anything that they can think up.

My husband, Jake, gets home at 5:00 and we eat dinner.

Depending on the season, sometimes we’ll have fresh salmon followed by a hike or blueberry picking but today is one of our famous bad weather days. We frequently get hurricane force winds that topple cranes and knock over semi-trucks. Today we’ll stay in.

After dinner the house usually fills up with friends for Bible study, basketball games, barbecues, etc. Being a pastor’s home, we’re always full of friends. On the rare occasion that our house is empty at bedtime, the kids and I read a chapter of their current read-aloud and I tuck them in to bed. It’s hard to sleep this time of year though, because the sun is up until 11:00 pm. That’s pretty much an average day in our lives.

Favorite Timberdoodle Tool:

We really enjoy the fun little accessories that Timberdoodle carries. They make school sparkle with the promise of fun! I’m thinking: Smencils, Mad Mattr, Thinking Putty, etc.

More About Our Family:

I think our home sets us apart. We live in a wild place where few people ever dream to visit. We fly a propeller plane to come home and tickets are about $1000 each and that’s just from Anchorage. If you’ve ever seen the Deadliest Catch…that’s our home. We have no mall, no Walmart, no movie theater, and nearly no trees, but we have wild horses, thousands of bald eagles, salmon runs, blueberries and mountains!

Follow Us on Social Media:

We have a church website and a hiking blog with photos of the island. www.unalaskareformed.org and www.aleutianhiker.com

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High School Transcripts and Diplomas

By Karla
In FAQ, High School
3 Min Read
H

If you have the privilege of homeschooling a high school student, you’ve probably wondered about transcripts and diplomas, particularly if your child is college-bound.

Hope: Our question for today is regarding high school transcripts. And you guys have asked us “I don’t know how to classify what schoolwork my child has done this year, how to classify that onto the transcript!” and “I don’t know how to make a transcript!” What can you tell us about that?

Pearl: Sure. So we get that question a lot and our favorite answer is to go to HSLDA, which is the Home School Legal Defense Association. They have compiled all the resources to know exactly what you need to do for transcripts, for diplomas, for everything pretty much related to home schooling. They have a sample transcripts. They have transcripts that you can edit. Basically, what a transcript is, is a list of every subject your child has studied for the year, how many credits’ worth of study that was, and what their GPA was on that course. They have a helpful guide for determining GPA. If you go to our handbooks, you can see a list of every subject that’s covered and how many credits it would be if you use each item to the maximum potential.

So you would get, say, 2 credits in science for doing Integrated Physics and Chemistry. You could also get additional credits in science by doing all the related resources, too– Chemistry 101 or Physics 101— but you don’t need to. You will look at that list in our handbook and say, “Okay. Here’s the ones where I’ve earned the full credits. On these ones maybe I didn’t, maybe I customized them out.” Maybe you added music. You can customize it to be exactly what your child has done in school for the year.

Hope: If you want to know what qualifies as a credit go to our curriculum guide and it will tell you what credits your child will learn what for what products, and if you want to know how to take that information and actually make a transcript go to HSLDA and they will walk you through that process.

One follow-up question is, “Once I complete 12th grade do I receive a diploma from you?”

Pearl: The answer is no, because a diploma can only be issued by a teacher or by a school. We are not a teacher or a school, but your parents, or you as the parent, can issue the diploma whenever they feel that you have completed high school. So it’s up to whoever does the teaching to sign off on a certificate and say they’ve completed high school. Again, there are sample diplomas so you can see exactly what one should look like at HSLDA.

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Updating Your Schedule Mid-Year

By Karla
In FAQ
3 Min Read
U

If you’ve ever suddenly realized that you’re halfway through the school year and falling behind in a subject, this feature is for you. Learn how to recalculate the year for the lessons you still have left, and pick up the pace to finish on time.

Pearl: Today we’re going to look at one more aspect of our online schedule customizer. So the question is, what can we do if somebody is working with a child that maybe is just a voracious learner in one subject and needs extra time in another? Now you’re halfway through the year and you’ve not made as much progress in math as you hoped, but you are way ahead in science.
What do you do?

Hope: Let’s take a look at Walker’s list again. We’ll go to Walker’s dad’s list and select Edit. Let’s just say Dad wasn’t able to get to Math for a couple weeks. And now they have fallen behind. So here’s what we’re going to do.

When Walker first started the course he had 210 worksheets he needed to complete. They did good for a while. They were able to get 25 of those worksheets done. But now it is already, let’s say, December 3rd, and all they’ve completed is 25 worksheets. So what they would do is go ahead and put in the number they’ve already completed. That’s 25 worksheets. Then scroll down. And they would put in as if they were on break from Math-U-See from when they started school back in July. All these break weeks up until December 3rd.  It’s as if they purposely scheduled themselves on break from math during those months. Then come back up here and click Save. And then let’s generate a new schedule.

Now, if you look at the schedule, it’s going to tell you they have Math-U-See Alpha, 176 worksheets. Again, they used to have 210 but we’re saying it’s as if they were on break for a number of months and have started fresh. So now, with the ones they’ve already done they have 176 worksheets left. This means they’re going to now need to do 11 worksheets per week.

If you look at the early part of their schedule Week 1 is going to show in July they didn’t have any Math-U-See scheduled because they were “on break.” Scroll on down to December 3rd, and you’re going to see Math-U-See reappears in their schedule for 11 worksheets. If he completes these 11 worksheets every week, he will complete the Math-U-See program by the end of the year.

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Timberdoodle Story #224

By Karla
In Timberdoodle Stories
3 Min Read
T

Today’s Timberdoodle Story shared by:

DT

What made you consider Timberdoodle for the first time?

I heard about it through a radio show.

Before you decided to use Timberdoodle, what was your biggest obstacle or concern about using a Timberdoodle Curriculum Kit?

I was new to the idea of homeschooling.

What helped you overcome that?

The excellent quality of products in the Timberdoodle kits, the online scheduling, the curriculum guide, and the ability to ask Timberdoodle staff questions and get friendly, helpful replies!

If your friend decided to start homeschooling and felt overwhelmed, what would you tell her?

I am no expert as of yet, as I am homeschooling a young preschooler and have absolutely no other homeschooling experience. However, I would say from my own limited experience that I would never want to miss all the time and fun I have had with my 2-year-old, as I watch her grow and learn. These toddler/preschool years go by so quickly, I like to think that I am enjoying them as much as I possibly can. At this point in time I cannot imagine sending my child off to preschool, and I consider it a blessing to teach her myself, at home. Timberdoodle allowed me to get my feet wet, and if someone else is desiring to teach their preschooler but is scared that they can’t do it, I would suggest they start here with Timberdoodle. A gentle introduction (with a good amount of hand holding!) to homeschooling a preschooler that I guarantee will gradually increase your confidence. I would also recommend to stay flexible and let your child guide your teaching, as that is the beauty of homeschool and one on one learning!

Is there anything unique about your family that you’d like to share with us?

I do not have anything particularly unique with regards to how the Timberdoodle curriculum is working for us, except to say that prior to trying Timberdoodle’s preschool curriculum, I had no prior homeschooling experience. Timberdoodle most definitely was a perfect starting place for me, as well as my child. I started out worrying and fretting about not following everything perfectly, but that is not necessary. Every child is unique. I also have had enough confidence instilled in me to venture into creating my own supplements to the curriculum, or substitutions if my child is “not there yet.” There are also many, many helpful online resources for homeschoolers today. Learning should be fun, and Timberdoodle has shown me how. So in conclusion I would say Timberdoodle overall has actually been an empowering experience for me; it has been a journey. And, just to think less than a year ago as of this writing I was not even really thinking much about homeschooling!

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Adding Chores to the School Schedule

By Karla
In FAQ, Scheduling
2 Min Read
A

Does your family do chores? Are you looking for a more freeing way to schedule them? Check out this way to add chores to your custom school schedule!

Deb: Today, Hope, we’re going to talk a little bit more about how to use your scheduler. Obviously, you’re using it for listing out all the different curriculum that you’re using, but there’s some things that are hidden in there. Some bonus stuff. One I would like you to show us how to do it is a chore list. So we can add as many chores as we want and then child will have these boxes that they can check off as they go along. Can you show us how that works?

Hope: Yes. Go to timberdoodleschedules.com. Login. Now choose the grade you’re working on. After you fill in all the information you want for the curriculum itself, scroll on down to the bottom and click on Add Course.

Let’s add sweep floors first. Put this under Life Skills. Unit Type, we’ll put all hardwood floors. This item reoccurs. Daily. How many do I want to complete every day? Just one a day. And Create Course.

Okay. We can add more. Let’s say they also have to “make your bed.” Under Life Skills. This is a project. This item reoccurs daily. Once a day. Create Course.

Then, after you’ve added all the chores you want to add, click Create Schedule, then Generate Schedule.

Let’s see what that will look like. For Week 1, they need to make their bed 5 times, and sweep the floors 5 times. You can change the wording here if you want it to say, “Five times you make your bed,” or, “Five times sweep the floors.” You can put in whatever wording will be easiest for your child.

Then every day they will need to check one of those off.

Deb: Wow, Hope! That was super helpful.

We can do other things besides chores. We can do piano lessons, if you’re practicing every day.

I know many of our families are doing AWANAs and they want them to be practicing their verses every day.

Anything you would want to be able to check off, particularly on a daily basis, you’re telling me we can do that now.

Hope: Absolutely.

Deb: Super!

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