Be still my beating heart- our homeschool curriculum for next year has arrived! As a mom, foster parent, and former kindergarten teacher you can be sure I have opinions on education– if you’re not homeschooling, hang in there, I have opinions on games and toys too. 🙂 My first year homeschooling I created my own stuff. I have a degree in early childhood, I’d taught kindergarten, and I was pretty confident I could handle it. Yes, you may all laugh.
Mommy wasn’t the only one with a happy smile when our order came!
We had a great kindergarten year, but honestly first grade needed structure. But oh my, there is SO MUCH stuff! You can school online, or just on the computer with CDs, or you can read aloud to your kids all day, or you can give them workbooks, or you can sit down and cry because of all the overwhelming decisions.
I don’t want to know how many countless hours I spent researching just the right program. What I do know is after filling most of a notebook and downing three quarters of a bottle of tylenol over a two-month period I had pretty much decided to use a different company for each subject to get the critical thinking, phonics foundation, hands-on approach I was looking for.
And then I found Timberdoodle.
A friend reviewed their Block Builders set on her blog. I clicked around for a while until I found their first-grade core curriculum.
It had everything I’d already picked out for my son.
It was tempting to bang my head against the desk in frustration of all the wasted hours, but I was too thrilled to be angry. In addition to the math, reading, history, and science they also had fantastic extras. The Block Builders, but also mazes for building fine motor skills and games for memory retention. I ordered Thinking Putty for my kinesthetic learning to use while listening and beautiful books of illustrated history. I added writing and geography, which I hadn’t planned but have been favorites all year.
I ordered Christmas presents, Easter gifts and birthday surprises for my kids, niece, and nephews. We had a great first grade year and I can’t stop looking at the pile of stuff for second grade! I even ordered most of the kindergarten kit for Anna.
I’m not on their blogging team and can’t be till I can secure 26 more followers (if you can help with that…), so this really is just my opinion. I’m sharing because if you order a core curriculum before April 15th you get a free Boogie Board, which I never would have spent money on but here’s the pic of us about two seconds after we opened our box.
Boogie Boards were the first things to come out of the box and held the kids’ attention well enough I slipped the Easter gifts out and they never knew!
So I just wanted to share, in case anyone is questioning the millions of choices for the perfect homeschool curriculum. Order from Timberdoodle.
Daddy's Tractor 
Are you still using timberdoodle?
Yes! We do a lot more unit studies from the library now that my kids are older, so we don’t purchase science and social studies, but we still love Timberdoodle!
You just made my day! I’m going to think of it that way from here on out! And it’s so true!
How cool. I have looked at a lot of homeschooling curriculums and never saw this one either. Looks like it will be a fantastic homeschooling year 🙂
Thanks for sharing about the Timberdoodle curriculum packages. I’m looking over the kindergarten package and it looks awesome. I have been researching and driving myself nuts with all the options out there for homeschooling these days. Maybe you can write a follow up post once you have been using your package a few months to share what you think.
LOL! Thanks Jennifer, I should probably put in an edit. We did use first grade curriculum last year, this years is for second grade!
Don’t regret the hours you spent looking … without them, you may not have recognized the perfect solution when you saw it. At the very least, you would not have appreciated it as much! Good preparation is never wasted – I’ll bet you learned more than you realize, and it will be a fantastic foundation for the years of homeschooling to come. God bless ~