What made you consider Timberdoodle for the first time?
I did a lot of research before choosing a curriculum (this is our first year homeschooling), but ultimately I settled on Timberdoodle because I was impressed with how “hands on” the curriculum components were. The curriculums looked fun, as well as educational.
Before you decided to use Timberdoodle, what was your biggest obstacle or concern about using a Timberdoodle Curriculum Kit?
I didn’t really have any concerns. I was pretty confident that Timberdoodle was going to be a good fit for us. Any concerns that I may have had would likely have stemmed more from the fact that I was a first time homeschooling mom, and wanted to do everything “right”
What helped you overcome that?
As we progressed through our schoolwork for the year, I quickly overcome any concerns that I had in regard to our curriculum or my ability to teach the materials. Teaching my child felt like the most natural feeling in the world (because arguably, it is—-and we’ve been doing just this all along).
If your friend decided to start homeschooling and felt overwhelmed, what would you tell her?
I would tell her to just breathe, take things one step at a time, and most importantly, just have fun!
Mosdos is a phenomenal literature course, available for grades 3-8. May we introduce you?
Mosdos Opal: a complete literature program for your third grader.
Mosdos Opal includes two teachers manuals, two readers, and a double-sided student activity book.
Starting here in the teacher’s manual you will see that they give you a snapshot of what each page in the textbook will look like, along with some teacher helps.
Each lesson starts with what they call a Lesson in Literature. This is using original short selections to give your students the initial practice with the targeted literary component or skill.
Next, we’ll move into their main reading portion. As you can see the pages are colorful and the text is easy to read. This is a very engaging format for reading literature for your children.
You’ve got word banks here where you’re working on vocabulary. Mosdos recommends that you review the vocabulary words using your teacher’s manual before your child goes into their long reading. They give you a list of vocabulary words. They also recommend that you have your child complete Vocabulary Activity 1 to go along with learning those vocabulary words and doing the activity page in their workbook before they go on to their long reading.
The teacher’s manual will help you, giving you more information into the story or into the setting. They give you literal and analytical questions to be asking your children as they go into their long reading. Each page comes with this teacher support alongside.
Your child will be completing their workbook pages along with the story. Let’s look at this one here. A little bit more vocabulary practice, some creative writing to expand on the story, some language arts activities, and then some graphic organization.
At the end of each literary work, they have a complementary poem that goes along with. These tie-in poems have been provided in the textbook simply to be enjoyed. They often share a thematic or topical link with the prose selection that they follow, but there is no student curriculum associated with these poems.
Hello! My name is Kimberly and I am a homeschooling mom with 2 of my 6 kids still at home. Hannah is 5 and Eve is 1.
Hannah enjoys anything creative: painting, building, outdoors, animals, etc. She is quite a sponge for knowledge and doesn’t know when or how to stop.
We are retired from the US Army, so we work only as needed now, which is great for spending time with the kiddos.
Our Morning:
We typically get started by 7:00 a.m. and after our breakfast shakes will get busy with devotional by 8:00, just in time to start class.
This year was our first year homeschooling, with Hannah in Kindergarten. We have class from 8:00 until maybe 2:00 with an hour or so for lunch.
If she feels up to it, Hannah does a little extra to have Fridays off.
Our Afternoon:
Lunch is usually leftover from one of our delicious emeals.
In the afternoon is when we like to finish out with creative things like building with Gears, drawing, and painting. This is also when we practice what we’ve learned about maps and geography with road trips around town, to the park, and to the library.
Chores are done as needed in the afternoon together. It is much easier to get a 5-year-old to work if I’m doing it with her.
Our Evening:
Dinners are fun at our house because with emeals my family actually likes to help prepare. We get to talk about our day, the ups and downs, and help each other with various tasks.
The hardest part of the day is getting the kids to bed as they always want five more minutes of play. We read stories and have tickle-fests to relax and prepare for the night.
Favorite Timberdoodle Tool:
Gears! My daughter flew through the instructions and built everything in sight. When she got through all of that she anxiously built new things as often as she could. The hardest part was asking her to take apart her masterpieces so she could build something new.
Are Timberdoodle Kits suitable for kinesthetic learners?
What makes them such a good fit?
Deb: Welcome to Timberdoodle! Today we’re going to tackle the question of whether our curriculum is suitable for a kinesthetic child. Why would that be important, Hope?
Hope: Mainly because your kinesthetic child is the hardest type of learner to tailor a curriculum for. A visual learner is probably the easiest child to teach. An auditory learner is not far behind because you can read most of the stuff to them and that’s how they learn best. Typically, it is hardest to find a curriculum that will suit a kinesthetic learner exactly.
Deb: The quick answer to that question is yes! For a longer answer, let’s take a look at some of the different ways we do that. We’re going to walk through different topics.
Math
Deb: We’re using Math-U-See from kindergarten through 12th grade. It’s a natural. It is using these blocks for the most part. Do you want to show us?
Hope: They’re number units. You’ve got your hundred blocks and then ten, nine, eight, and so on. As your child is working the problems they can have a physical representation of what the number stands for. That’s the kinesthetic learning.
Language Arts
Deb: For language arts we start pretty young with Playfoam Alphabet where they’re taking different letters of the alphabet and using the Playfoam to shape it.
In the next grade up, Pre-K, they’re using Wikki Stix to do the same thing.
Hope: Yes, and that’s very kinesthetic. There’s coloring of the letters and they have a lot of hands-on activities for you to do, whether it’s make the letter out of play dough… or shaving cream… all of that. Going up from there you’re using either magnetic tiles or you’re doing it on your iPad using tiles to form the words and such.
Deb: My recommendation, if you’re doing it with a kinesthetic child, is don’t use the app. I think you can. I think you could get some benefit. But I think they get more benefit actually manipulating the tiles. So that will be my recommendation, but you’ve got both options.
Hope: The other one in language arts is Spelling You See which covers all kinds of learning styles. For the auditory learner it’s the dictation. For the visual learner it’s where they’re circling the letter combinations and color coding on the passage. Then, for the kinesthetic learner it’s all of the actual writing it out.
Thinking Skills
Deb:Thinking skills is really where we shine in a lot of ways. When some people think thinking skills they think just workbooks. We’ve got some amazing workbooks that we have carried since you were little and they’re just great. But some kids are going to learn better hands-on. That’s where something like the Smart Games comes into effect. Starting from preschool through 12th grade we include some kind of hands-on way to learn the thinking skills. Show us.
Hope: For example, Three Little Piggies here. You’ve got the board and you’ve got the booklet with the challenges and the solutions. You’re going to set up the board. You’ll be using these houses on this challenge to cover the pigs up to protect them from the wolf.
Deb: We have different things like Colorku which is a Sudoku with colored marbles.
Hope: We’ve got Smart Cookies where your child is using logic to deduce where each cookie goes on the cookie tray. Then clues become more abstract and there’s more of that critical thinking / logic as they’re figuring out where to put the cookie on the tray.
Deb: We have bambinoLUK and miniLUK that are imported from Europe that are a great hands-on way to teach a number of thinking skills.
We also have doodle books that we start in kindergarten. Doodle books are a great way for your child to be thinking with their hands. They’re going to ask questions, give scenarios and situations. This is the kindergarten book but we’ve got them up through most of grades. The children will be asked to complete the picture using thinking skills.
We also have, in 1st grade and in 5th grade, the Scrunch Map which the kids love. It’s a map that they’re not going to ruin. You can scrunch it and stick it back in the bag. It’s a great hands-on way for a child to look at geography.
History
Deb: Most of our history has a corresponding activity book with it. For hands-on learning your child will probably listen to you read the book or listen to the audiobook CD and then they’ll be motivated to want to build something to go along with it. Maybe they will build something out of clay or maybe they will build something out of paper and tape or whatever. That will help reinforce what they’ve just learned in the history.
We also have Famous Figures. Why don’t you show us that one, Hope?
Hope: All right. This is Famous Figures of Ancient Times. You’ve got your figures, which are pre-colored, that you can cut out and then use brads to attach all the different pieces, and also the one for your child to color. We put these in the grade that correlates with the same time period so that your child gets to be creating these same characters that they’re learning about in their history program.
Art
Deb: For art, again, that’s a natural one for hands-on. Some people approach art with just a book and learn about great artists. Our approach is a little bit different.
In 5th grade they’re going to be doing stop-motion. That works well for history. They can set up a scenario that will show what they’ve just learned in history using the stop-motion. They can use it to show what they’ve learned in any of the topics. It’s a great art program.
Science
Deb: For science, we have a couple of options. New to us this year is the Berean Science. It’s great for a kinesthetic child. It is Christian. It is has a whole slew of activities. In fact, you’re going to do an activity for every topic. Anything in blue is going to be the activity, and then you’ll have a little bit of information, and then more activity, a little bit more information, and so forth. So you’ve got lots and lots of experiments with that. On the secular side, with Building Blocks of Science, you will have a lot of experiments with that one, as well, and ways to document it. So our science, again, is a natural way for a kinesthetic child to learn science.
Plus in some of the grades, kindergarten particularly, with Boom! science, there are 60 experiments that they will be doing. Lots of different activities in there. The hands-on child is going to love Boom! science. Through different grades we’ve got different ways for kids to learn science that way.
STEM
Deb: For STEM, that is one that we, again, really shine on, because I think all of our STEM is hands-on. So let’s look at some of the highlights.
We really like the Robotis. We’ve got the Robotis for 1st grade. They’re going to be building the robots like that. We also have Robotis in 4th grade and again in 12th grade. This is an example of what they’ll be doing being the 4th grade one. They’re building a dynamo. You can see the light going on right here.
We also have ThinkPlay that we import from Europe that is going to be construction, starting in Pre-K and kindergarten, using gears and so forth.
We have Zoob which is an excellent STEM program where they’re presented with a problem they have to build to solve it.
Engino, again, an import, that will have them building vehicles and simple machines in the 7th grade. In 11th grade they will be building robots that they learn how to program.
We also have, new this year, Aviation which is a great STEM program. They will learn a lot about aviation but they also have a lot of hands-on activities. If you haven’t seen the video on our aviation course I really recommend you to take a look at it.
We also have a Duinokit where they’ll learn about that. That one’s a really fun one because it’s kind of a mystery and they’re learning how to solve a mystery and code for it.
And building an engine, which was one of your favorite things to do. You actually built a working engine.
We have a lot of STEM things that are hands-on.
Hope: I think that about covers how the Timberdoodle program is not only well suited for the visual and auditory learner but how we actually specialize for the kinesthetic learner.
Here are 7 quick reasons to consider Timberdoodle’s comprehensive curriculum kits.
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.
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.
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.
You can customize. Every kit that Timberdoodle offers is fully customizable so you can adapt it to your unique child without breaking the budget.
The checklist system. Our super simple weekly checklist allows for the unexpected, giving families the freedom to enjoy life without losing momentum in their homeschooling assignments.
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.
Works for charter schools. Now 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.
What made you consider Timberdoodle for the first time?
I loved all of the hands on elements that the curriculum featured.
Before you decided to use Timberdoodle, what was your biggest obstacle or concern about using a Timberdoodle Curriculum Kit?
Nothing, it all was so easy to organize and utilize.
What helped you overcome that?
Having the online resource to plan out our daily activities and goals really helped schedule things well for us.
If your friend decided to start homeschooling and felt overwhelmed, what would you tell her?
Take it one day at a time and find other local homeschoolers to get ideas and tips from.
Is there anything unique about your family that you’d like to share with us?
My son has sensory processing disorder and severe anxiety, taking this year to have FUN with school has been such a blessing and it was been wonderful to see him learn and grow so much academically.
Today’s Q & A addresses our favorite assessments, courses, and questions to utilize in helping a student come up to speed on language arts. What would you add?
Hope: Someone wrote in and said, “We kind of dropped the ball with my 11th grader on his spelling, writing, and reading skills. What do we do? How do we help bring him up to grade level on that?” What are your thoughts?
Deb: Well, it’s unfortunate we’re not dialoguing back and forth because it would be very helpful for me to know some of the background. Have you used anything? Have you tried programs and they have not worked for you? Is there a reason for the delay? Is there dyslexia? There are a lot of holes in this. We’re kind of floundering to figure it out.
Hope: Or is it just that it’s not something you focused on at all and it’s just been ignored? So maybe there’s no physical reason. It’s just an issue of we just never hit it.
Deb: Exactly. Here at Timberdoodle we get questions from all walks of life. If you have adopted a child when they were 14 years old… A lot of different things could be at play here and we don’t know. But where I would start first of all is testing. So test your child. Go to our site and look at Spelling You See. Take their test and see where he falls in that. If he can test out of all the Spelling You See tests well enough that he doesn’t need to do Spelling You See, as far as I’m concerned that’s okay. Tick that one off. If not, then plug them into the appropriate one and start working on it. It’s an easy enough program that you could zip through. You don’t have to just do one a day. You can try to fast forward through the whole program. So I would go with that.
For grammar, I would go with Easy Grammar Plus. It’s designed specifically for that. So you would cover everything in grammar in a year, easy peasy.
Reading is going to be hard. Again, I don’t know what we’re working with. Are we talking about a child who knows how to read but hates it? Or a child who doesn’t know how to read? It might behoove you to take the All About Reading placement test to see. Yes, he can read at at the appropriate level or no, he cannot. If he cannot, he may feel silly using All About Reading fourth grade level, but better to feel silly and master it than to never master it. Reading is pretty important.
However, if you have a child who does know how to read but hates it, that’s probably going have something to do with what he’s reading. So find out what he wants to read. My son would light up for any firefighter magazine. Even when he was eight, we subscribed to a firefighter magazine and he would read that. He wouldn’t read things that his sister read but he would read that. For this particular boy it might be skateboarding. It could be farming. It could be aerodynamics. I don’t know. But find out what his passion is and just flood him with books and trade magazines and anything else that would deal with that topic.
Hope: And if he’s not ever going to be a reader, I think that that’s an acceptable answer, too. He knows how to read we’ve tested for that. He is capable of reading. He doesn’t enjoy it and that’s okay. But if he can’t read then you’re going to want to see if you can help him out with that and get him up to grade level and to ability.
Deb: Right. Another thing that we talked previously about is there’s some advantage to having a familiarity with some of the classic literature. You may hear it mentioned in a sermon or in a speech or whatever, and he will feel more comfortable in those kind of settings if he knows the reference. So if you have a child who hates to read or cannot read and you still want to give them some taste of the classic literature audiobooks are a great way to go.
Hope: Have him listen to an audiobook and then he’ll have at least exposure to it and be somewhat familiar with it. That’s a great way to go.
If his not being at grade level is not due to lack of exposure, but just because he struggles more, due to dyslexia or whatever, there are other things that we can recommend. If you want to email us specifics we can direct you towards some resources, such as Touch-Type, Read, and Spell, which is a typing program that assists with spelling and reading, and is specifically helpful for the dyslexic student. If there are specific reasons that he’s not up at grade level that you know of, then we are happy to consult with you and say, “Hey, we think this product will assist him best.”
The other area we didn’t hit would be composition. What would you recommend for that?
Deb: For that I recommend Jump In. It’s a great program. It’s in our fifth grade program, but it can be used for whatever age. You, as a parent, would look at the work that the child turned out and would say them, “You didn’t give your best effort…” or, “You did!” It’s one that has the most flexibility to the program and yet accomplishes what you’re trying to do.
Hope: That would be for the religious perspective. If you’re coming from a non-religious perspective probably something like Wordsmith Craftsman or Wordsmith Student would be more along the lines of what you’re looking for.
Again, if you have some specifics that you think would be helpful for us to know and help us to better answer this question we’re always happy to take your questions at mailbag@timberdoodle.com and work with you and see if we can help you tailor a program that would specifically address what your child’s concerns are.
Hello! We’re the Puckett family. I am a homeschooling mom. My husband is an inspector of metal, piping and a vibrations tech.
We have three boys and two girls. Our eldest son is Kendall, age 24, who has a degree in Computer Science. Next is Kameron, age 20, who is in college for Radiography, and Kallen, age 15. Our girls are McKenna, age 14, and MaKayla, age 10. Our boys love anything to do with computers and have built several computers of their own. Our girls love crafts and our youngest loves Chemistry. She is always trying out new experiments.
We have one cat named GreyC who is our homeschool mascot.
As a family we love to go camping and just recently started going on cruises. Our family has been able to experience living overseas in China for four years. While we were there we fell in love with new cultures and traveling to different places.
Our Morning:
Our typical homeschool morning is first fixing breakfast. Breakfast is usually eggs, bacon and toast. Sometimes we have waffles when we have more time.
We then will start on our Language and Spelling. This we usually do for an hour to two depend on what the curriculum has for us to do that day. We then take a 15 minute break and start our Math.
Our Afternoon:
After math it’s time to start fixing our lunch. Our lunch changes from day to day. We might have hamburgers one day and pizza the next.
After lunch we have a 30 minute recess. Sometimes it is outside playing or just a free time to play a game.
We then sit down to work on History. This year we studied the history of our different States. We then studied the Geography of where the States are and their capitols.
After History is Science. This year we studied the human body and even made a cell out of jello and candy.
Our Evening:
Dinner was chicken on the grill with rice, green peppers, squash and onions.
Today was a good day and we accomplished a lot. We usually end our day with a family walk or swim. Sometimes we go and visit our grandparents or friends.
More About Our Family:
Our family is blessed to have three special needs kids in our lives. Our 15-year-old boy has dyslexia, ADD, dysgraphia and borderline Autistic. Our 14-year-old girl has multiple learning disabilities but loves to learn and keeps growing every year. Our 11-year-old has Spina Bifida and is in and out of the hospital a lot. This does not stop her. She’s ahead of the grade she should be in and loves to learn.
What made you consider Timberdoodle for the first time?
After researching the benefits of homeschooling compared to traditional public schools it seemed like a no brainer to go this route. We tried a cyber school that used the K12 curriculum first. The material was good, but we were still under the restrictions and schedule of the host school. This did not work well for our lifestyle. My wife is a travel nurse and the whole family comes along to wherever we want to go next. I found a good home school association to join and started my research. I was going to go with K12 but it was very expensive. I wasn’t experienced enough to pick and choose what books for what subjects would be good for my children so I began looking at curriculum packages. It seemed that most packages with the best reviews were faith based, which I didn’t want. At first I thought Timberdoodle was only faith based, but upon further research I found the secular kits, and fell in love with the material. I’ve spent hours looking up more options but couldn’t find anything better. I kept coming back to the website reading description after description of the material and finally let my wife know I have found the company. After the Mommy stamp of approval we ordered the 4th, 2nd, and preschool secular kits along with a few items for the elite kits and got so excited when it arrived. It has been very good for us. The scheduler really helped me shape our days to judge how much work was reasonable in a week. I will be returning.
Before you decided to use Timberdoodle, what was your biggest obstacle or concern about using a Timberdoodle Curriculum Kit?
My biggest concern was that I would be overwhelmed trying to teach three children at once.
What helped you overcome that?
The self teaching material.
If your friend decided to start homeschooling and felt overwhelmed, what would you tell her?
Try a Timberdoodle kit.
Is there anything unique about your family that you’d like to share with us?
My wife is a travel nurse. We go where she goes. We live in South Carolina but we learn in any city we want. We’ve been to Myrtle Beach, Las Vegas, Charlotte, Anchorage, Dallas and of course home with plenty more cities just waiting for us. The kids (and mommy and daddy) love the new sights and experiences they get to have.
Some people enjoy spending hours mapping out their schooldays, but many of us find the thought petrifying.
What if your curriculum kit included free access to a scheduler that allowed you to be as in-depth or easy-going as you’d like to be?
Now it does!
Timberdoodle’s Custom Scheduler 2.0 features:
1. Set a custom start date for school, as well as how many weeks you’d like to schedule.
A standard school year is 36 weeks, but you could opt to school year-round or, compress all your schooling into fewer weeks so that you finish before the baby comes, vacation, or your next big thing.
2. Easily add or remove items from your checklist, and add alternate courses
Perhaps your child isn’t doing Mystery of History this year since he’s taking history through the co-op. Deselect it, and it will disappear from your checklist!
Your kindergartener might be totally winning with Mathematical Reasoning, so you stayed with that this year instead of swapping to Math-U-See. Just uncheck Math-U-See and check Mathematical Reasoning instead. Done.
3. You can even add completely custom courses: running, piano lessons, co-op…
We find it helpful to keep all of the expectations for our week in one place. If that helps your family too, now you can do it!
4. Add items that you’d like to do X times a week.
Calculating how many pages to do in your workbook each week is one thing. But sometimes you just want to remember to play Mobi Max twice a week. Just add it as a recurring item, and you’re set.
5. Add a second student, or teacher.
Are you sharing the teaching responsibility with a spouse or grandparent? Create a second checklist just for them, with only the items they will teach. You can also add a checklist for a second learner or twin!
6. Print the recommended weekly checklists.
Our family has been a fan of weekly checklists literally for decades. It gives enough flexibility that a surprise doctor appointment doesn’t leave you juggling the schedule yet again, but also keeps you on track so that you actually get everything done. Perhaps best of all, your child can begin from an early age to take responsibility for his own work.
7. Add or update courses mid-year if needed.
Did you find the perfect supplement in January? No problem, you can easily add it to the remainder of your year. Find yourself ahead in one topic and behind in another? Update your schedule to adjust your pace and finish on time.
8. Make daily checklists if desired.
Some families, particularly new homeschoolers, find it helpful to have daily schedules rather than weekly ones. If that’s you, you’ll be thrilled to know you can now do that easily.
Plus three bonus features:
1. Choose large font if you’d prefer.
This is particularly helpful for the youngest readers.
2. Add the lesson numbers on your checklist.
By default, your checklist will say _ lessons every week. But if you’d prefer it specified, “Chapter 7 in Fallacy Detective” this week, change the setting, and you’re good to go.
3. Choose which courses to schedule on which days.
Want to move science to Friday? Or perhaps you’d like to make sure math happens on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays only? Just go into that course and change the settings. Done.
How to Edit Your Schedule
This boatload of helpful features boils down to this: your schedule can be easily tweaked to meet your specific needs, whatever those may be.
Or are you striving for sanity while juggling multiple students?
We have some tips for you in today’s FAQ!
Hope: Our question for today is, “If I have a 5th grader, a 3rd grader, and a 1st grader, how can I combine my teaching? Is there any way to teach them all from the same curriculum or how can I do that?”
Deb: We’re not just talking about those particular grades. We’re talking about what to do if you’re combining multiple children and multiple grades. What does that look like? And of course the first question we have to determine is why you’re doing that. Are you doing it for economical reasons or you’re just doing it for sanity? Let’s first jump into “you’re doing it for economical reasons.” What can we do?
Hope: The first place I would look to combine would be history because that’s a natural for for multiple grades. I would pick a history level for one of those specific grades. Read it out loud as a group and have them do age-appropriate activities.
Deb: You wouldn’t even have to read it out loud. The most common history for that age group is going to be Story of the World and it’s got the audiobook, so you can put that in and they’ll do the work for you. It’s got age-appropriate activities through the book so you can start in 1st grade with Story of the World 1. Or you can go with Story of the World 4 that’s used in 4th grade. You can choose which ever one would be most pertinent to your family. So that particular history would be checked off your list.
Hope: Other than that it’s going to depend on what your goal is.
Deb: Say we’ve got science. If you are using the religious track of Timberdoodle the Berean science is perfect because you address all those ages. On almost every other page is an experiment that all children will enjoy. Then the information can be geared to the level of each child.
Pearl: There are age-appropriate notebooking activities for each age group in there as well. So they’ve already built that into the course.
Hope: That would be history and science. What are some other ways that we can combine grades?
Deb: Pearl, do you have any thoughts?
Pearl: I do. If you’re combining students for economical reasons I would look at the STEM kits and the Smart Games. With the Smart Games you just want to look at each one. Look at the recommendation for it and look at the challenge level. Typically look for a first through fifth grade range. You should be able to find one that will meet the needs of all children
Deb: And we can help. If you want to email us and say, “I’ve got children these ages and I only want to get one STEM item. What would you recommend?” We’re here to help. We can give you some direction on that. The same STEM kit could be used for all three children. For example, Plus-Plus is part of 1st grade. But you could use the same material for all three but you’d expect better quality of construction for a 5th grader than you would for a 1st grader. Let’s say that we recommend Zoob because that would be the 3rd grade option for STEM. Then I would encourage you to look in the handbook for ideas on how to use the Zoob for the 1st grader. It will say, maybe, build something that your grandfather uses. They could do that with the Zoob set. It wouldn’t use the Zoob like the 3rd grader’s going to use it, but it’s going to get them hands-on thinking.
Pearl: So you’re looking for STEM ideas from the 1st grade handbook and implementing them with the same resources from 3rd grade kit just to save the cost.
Deb: Again, these are things that we can help you with either over the phone or by email so that you can cut some costs and have some appropriate STEM activities for a wide range of children. So we’ve got STEM. What about art?
Hope: If you are doing art for 1st, 3rd, and 5th graders the 3rd grade art set is a perfect level to combine both other ends of the spectrum because you’re doing painting in that one. The set comes with four different paintings. That makes it a good one to either split out or to have everybody doing the same project at the same time.
Deb: In the same way the Do Art Coloring with Clay set is in the first grade kit. You could use the same picture but you would expect more out of the 5th grader to blend the colors, to put more texture in, to meet more of your expectations. A lot of our art kits have multiples in them that would appeal to all the children. So if you had three kids you probably want to get a Basic kit for each kid just right out of the chute because it will give them the age-appropriate math and language arts and the thinking skills. But again, you may be able to play around with the thinking skills and share, depending on which one you decide on, with the other two children.
Pearl: The games or the workbooks themselves?
Deb: I’m thinking the games. It depends on the age of the child. If we’re not working with these three ages but high school, junior high, some of this won’t necessarily apply.
Hope: If, on the other hand, you are looking for ideas of how to combine your teaching for your own sanity… So if you’re saying, “I’ve got three kids. I can’t imagine how I’m going to get anything else done during the day besides teaching these kids. And what in the world do I do with the other two while the while I’m teaching one of them?” We’ve got some ideas for that as well. First of all, look at your list and decide what are things that your child will be able to do…
Deb: What list are you talking about?
Hope: Our weekly checklist. So you’re going get your curriculum. There will be a checklist in there, either the one that comes with the kit if you just got the standard kit, or if you customized it you’re going to go to the customization scheduler on our website and make your weekly checklist. Now you’ve got a list of everything you want to get done during the week. You can look through there and see what can your child do independently. That’s a huge push for Timberdoodle to get your child learning independently.
Deb: As soon as they have learned how to read they should be starting to manage the bulk of their school.
Hope: Yeah. If it’s a math book or if it’s critical thinking skills, whatever it is, they should be able to read the directions, follow it, and do it independently. If they have an issue, come to you and say, “Hey, I can’t figure out this problem.” Once you decide what are their independent things, then you’ll want to decide what things they’re going to need assistance with. Then it’s a balancing act. Your 1st grader’s going to need assistance with let’s say, spelling, because you’re going be reading them a list. So let’s have your 3rd grader and your 5th grader watching their Math-U-See video and doing that independently while you’re working with the first grader.
Deb: Or doing their Smart Games… or their STEM… or their art… If you are working with reading with your 1st grader and your 5th grader cannot figure out their math and just needs a brief question answered, you could have your 1st grader work on a Smart Game for a few minutes while you help the other child. It’s kind of a little bit of a rodeo until you get it all figured out. But once you do it, once the kids assume responsibility for what they’re doing and they’re checking off their checklist, it all kind of gels. Maybe the first week will be a little crazy.
Again, we’re here to help. If you have a particular age range you’re thinking of and you’re saying, “But I’m working with a baby and a 5th grader and a 12th grader. Tell me how I can do this.” It’s going to be a little bit harder but there are things that we can do and suggestions we can make.
Hope: Expense wise, we can help you figure out what is overlapping and what to split out. Time management wise, really push on independent learning. Maybe you’re going to spend the first couple of weeks or the first month tooling your children up to become independent learners and the rest of your year will be so much easier that way. So I would say that is the biggest push.
Deb: That answers that question. If you have any add-on questions, be sure to drop us a line at mailbag@timberdoodle.com.
A standard school year is 36 weeks, but you could opt to school year-round or, compress all your schooling into fewer weeks so that you finish before the baby comes, vacation, or your next big thing.
Your kindergartener might be totally winning with 
We find it helpful to keep all of the expectations for our week in one place. If that helps your family too, now you can do it!
Calculating how many pages to do in your workbook each week is one thing. But sometimes you just want to remember to play 
Our family has been a fan of weekly checklists literally for decades. It gives enough flexibility that a surprise doctor appointment doesn’t leave you juggling the schedule yet again, but also keeps you on track so that you actually get everything done. Perhaps best of all, your child can begin from an early age to take responsibility for his own work.
Did you find the perfect supplement in January? No problem, you can easily add it to the remainder of your year. Find yourself ahead in one topic and behind in another? Update your schedule to adjust your pace and finish on time.
By default, your checklist will say _ lessons every week. But if you’d prefer it specified, “Chapter 7 in Fallacy Detective” this week, change the setting, and you’re good to go.
Twitter
Facebook
Youtube
RSS
GooglePlus