OneLuckeyWife

Usborne Books & More has a fantastic book called  Little Children’s Drawing Book  which is part of Timberdoodle’s Preschool kit this year. It’s a super fun way to work on fine motor skills. Little Children’s Drawing Book has adorable pictures and each page the characters talk about what they want the child to draw. Works on scribbles, squiggles, swirls, shapes, lines, etc. Your child can really get creative with this book and I really like that. Anything that can bring out those creativity skills is a plus for me. Our daughter loves drawing and anything to do with art so she’s definitely been enjoying this book. She’d finish the whole book in a day if I let her. The characters ask for certain things or have a sentence to say about the picture and our daughter thinks it’s so hilarious. She’s been able to work on drawing things and can see a different way to draw certain things. There is a page where the child is supposed to draw a flower. Our daughter drew ...

Gobblet Gobblers  is part of Timberdoodle’s Kindergarten kit this year. It takes the classic game of Tic-Tac-Toe to the next level! The goal is still to get 3 in a row but your pieces can eat those smaller than it making more challenging. This game is really fun. When you place a piece you need to think about if your opponent can gobble your piece and win or if you can gobble theirs and win. You can move a Gobbler even after it’s already on the board. The game pieces come in 3 sizes and you get 2 of each size. Since we got this game our daughter has wanted to play all day everyday. She thinks it’s so funny when they gobble each other and loves to play with piece since they have such funny faces. Even though the game is suggested for kids 5 and up our daughter (4) doesn’t have a problem playing and understands what she’s supposed to do. I think this is a great game to help with critical thinking skills even though the child doesn’t know it. They are just having fun ...

Usborne Books & More has done it again! Another great book called  Look Inside Your Body  came with our Timberdoodle curriculum. The colors are bright, the graphics are outstanding and my favorite thing is there are flaps within flaps! Never seen such a thing before in a flip-the-flap book. It’s super cool. Each spread in the book covers something different and goes into just enough detail for a child so that they aren’t overwhelmed with to much information. We read one spread a week from this book. This Usborne book goes over eating, how to stay health, your brain and more. Our daughter loves flap books so this really peaked her interest. She gets really into the pictures and discovering what happens in the human body. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to introduce how the body works to their child. Look Inside Your Body goes over so much, the colors, graphics and flaps will definitely keep your littles engaged in the material.  ...

Creative to say the least!  What’s Going On Here?  are such cute little cards we got from Timberdoodle. Each card has a different scenario and the back of the cards have questions to ask about the picture. The colors are vibrant and all the characters are animals which is really cute. What I like most is about these cards are that they have the questions already there. You don’t need to think of them just pull out a card and your ready to go. Our daughter loves these. She will sit and tell you about each card until she’s gone through them all. Sometimes to extend on the lesson I ask her what might happen next and she’ll give a detailed story of what could happen. I definitely recommend these for teaching about feelings and how to act in certain situations or just as a fun bonus to do with your kiddos. There are a bunch of cards with all sorts of different scenarios on them so your kids are sure to have fun for hours. 

Teaching opposites can sometimes be hard. Your child may not understand what exactly an opposite is.  Push, Pull, Empty, Full  is another book from our Timberdoodle curriculum. Each spread in the book will focus on one pair of opposites at a time and the child gets to complete the pictures to make the opposites true. There is a lot of drawing and coloring in this book which I like because it keeps our daughter engaged and wanting to do more.  The pictures are draw like in the book  Happy, Sad, Feeling Glad . Our daughter really enjoys that workbook so I knew she would be fond of this one as well. I would say the only downside to this activity book is that it only goes over each pair of opposites once but it does allow you to have a side conversation with your kiddo about the material. I often have our daughter go look around the house for something that relates to the opposites we’re going over. I feel it reiterates what we’re learning and she gets excited to g...

Last year we used these Kumon books  that came with our Timberdoodle curriculum and loved them. For our kindergarten curriculum, Timberdoodle has  Kumon Kindergarten Logic  in it. Our daughter absolutely loves this book. It covers so much from patterns to mazes to pretend and more. What is nice is the skills start off easy and progressively get more challenging. Our daughter’s favorite is the pretend vs. real lesson. She found them very funny. I like that it covers so much and gives a good amount of lessons for each skill. With the rotation lessons I used a pair of child scissors, we have the Crayola ones, to demonstrate how the objects turn. I think the book having so many colors and cute pictures helps the student stay engaged in the materials. If our daughter had her way she’d finish the whole book in a day but I use Timberdoodle’s online scheduler and have all our curriculum set up for our 47 week school year.  

Math was always my favorite subject in cool; well until I took chemistry. I use Timberdoodle curriculum and they had a placement test for math. Even though our daughter placed for Alpha, in their 1st grade kit, I choose to stick with  Math-U-See Primer . My reason for this is because I wanted to give her the extra confidence of know things and getting answers right. What I love is that this curriculum comes with the student booklet, teacher manual, instructional DVD and block manipulatives. A really nice thing is in the blocks there is a huge poster for teaching place values and how to read a clock. The booklet is in black and white but offers a lot of coloring for the student. The book says to color the squares the same color as the blocks; eg: 5 is light blue so then when they show 5 squares together you’re supposed to color them light blue. Now I don’t have my daughter do this. I let her color the squares whatever color she wants because I don’t want her thinkin...

What Do People Do All Day  is such a cute book we got from Timberdoodle I love that all the characters are animals. It goes through so many different jobs that people would have in your community. There is even a part about what mom’s do; of course if the dad of the house does the majority of the housework you can expand and talk about that or how both mom and dad share the household responsibilities. The book goes through how a house is made and show many people with different jobs come together to build the house. What firefighters and police officers do, how a ship has many different jobs, what all goes into having a train run smoothly. Our daughter was especially happy to see the train portion because Daddy works on a train. By no means would I use this a single curriculum social studies but it’s a cute book that has a lot to offer when teaching about your community. We read about 2 pages a week so it build suspense with our daughter because she’s so eager to learn ...

Need an easy way to teach geography? It’s right here.  Skill Sharpeners Geography K  is apart of our Timberdoodle curriculum and it’s a great little workbook. Each section starts off with a little bit about the topic that you read then your child does a little worksheet on what was read and finally they get to work those cutting and pasting skills. Each section has a certificate saying they learned the topic which I really like. Our daughter loves when we get to put her things on the fridge and certificates are one of my favorite things to hang. The workbook is colorful and focuses on many different things; reading a map, landforms, continents and oceans, etc. I don’t remember learning half of what is in this book when I was in kindergarten I’m public school. Our daughter’s family part is the end of the lessons where she gets to cut and paste. It makes her so excited and she really gets into the material because of it. 

Usborne Books & More has such amazing book for kids and My Very First Body Book  is one of them. We got this book to go with our Timberdoodle curriculum. It has so much information presented in a perfect way for kids. I did 1 spread every week so it wasn’t overwhelming. What I like about this book is that it’s colorful and has fun pictures for kids so they are engaged in the learning process. It goes over so many things for young kids; eating properly, body parts, pumping blood, etc. I love when I can use a book and show our daughter in real life what the book is talking about. There is a section talking about how your body heals when you have a cut and we were able to see in real life how our cut heals. The end of the book shows life stages and how we start off in our mama’s tummy then we go from baby-kid-adult-elderly. It gives a little about the stages of life and our daughter has decided I am an elderly person because I get weak and need help sometimes. I w...

When I was a kid I had the hardest time learning to read. My aunt found out I was dyslexic and that is what was making it so hard to read and spell. With our Timberdoodle curriculum we got AAR Lv 1  (All About Reading). Last year we had the Prereading  version and loved it so I was very pleased to see they kept this as part of their curriculum. The main thing I like is that it is written in a way that I can understand what I’m supposed to do in order to teach reading effectively. The teacher manual has a bunch of tips through to help you along the way. The word and letter cards have examples so you know how to pronounce them or what sound you are teaching for that lesson.  What I did was tear out the pages in the student booklet; they are perforated. All the pieces that it said to cut out I also laminated. Some people have asked in the homeschool groups how to laminate. What I do is cut out the item, laminate and cut again. It makes a seal and last longer...