Today we're sharing some ideas for helping develop your child's motor skills.  If your child enjoys workbook type activities, look for fun: mazes sticker books (Kumon and Usborne are big hits here) sticker by number (a huge hit with our crew) Dot to Dot for Tiny Tots Other fantastic resources: sensory bins (Our 2-year-old loves his tray of sand and rocks and construction vehicles!)  play dough  writing in sand/rice/flour tools your child may have missed from the Preschool kit puzzles art of any type - watercolor, finger paint, do-a-dot, art kits...  lacing/threading water play (adding color tablets can keep kids...

Originally published in Timberdoodle’s 1990-1991 catalog Don’t you just love toddlers? They are so enthusiastic, loving, curious, confident, and innocent. However, to a home-educating mom, they are also exhausting, impatient, loud, and unpredictable. But how can we incorporate these tornadoes in with the older children in our education program without making them the center of it? Here are some ideas that have worked for us. 1. Pick up a few school supplies for them. Construction toys, beginning thinking skills books, and even Kumon workbooks are all great choices for toddlers and will let them participate in school alongside their older siblings. 2. Most toddlers will be...

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...

We are often asked how our curriculum will work for a child with autism. This is a subject near and dear to our hearts, as you’ll hear in the video. A HELPFUL OVERVIEW Today we are going to discuss using Timberdoodle curriculum with your child with autism. While this is just a quick overview of a couple highlighted topics pertaining to working with children with autism, we know that every child with autism is unique and each one is gifted and challenged in unique ways, and they do not often fit into an easy generalization. Yet we still wanted to...

In a fascinating article written by Cyndi Ringoen, a neurodevelopmentalist, she pointed out that until a child has developed his auditory short-term memory, the ability to recall a sequence of numbers, phonics training would be unsuccessful. What that means is that to utilize phonics beyond memorizing individual sounds, a child must have an auditory short-term memory. This is perfectly logical, but what do you do if your child’s auditory memory needs work? The following e-mail conversation with Danielle is shared with her permission: My daughter is 4 (5 in April) and is almost done with the K kit. She is very smart...