Developing the Early Learner (Timberdoodle Review)

After homeschooling for nearly 30 years, I have accumulated a lot of curriculum. During our recent move, I tried to pare down my collection just a bit, since my kids are getting older and our new house does not have quite as much bookspace as our last one did. Many of our books I could not bring myself to part with, however, even though our younger children have already completed/ outgrown them.

That is partly due to my sentimentality — for instance, I’ve used the same set of readers to teach all twelve of my children, and after so many years of faithful service, I believe they’ve earned a permanent place on our bookshelves.

But I’m also reluctant to part with a lot of my books due to a sense of practicality — after all, we already have six grandchildren (and two more on the way), which means a whole new generation of Flanders family members are coming up who can learn and grow and benefit by going through the books and curriculum I’ve chosen to keep.

Most of those keepers were old, well-worn friends, but one newer set that made the cut is a series of workbooks called Developing the Early Learner.

These titles are consumable, so they won’t last indefinitely, but for this season of our lives, they are the perfect thing for keeping grandkids occupied and engaged in learning when they come to visit on wintery afternoons.

My youngest kids enjoy working right alongside their nephews. In fact, moms who are schooling multiple ages could assign an older child to go through this series with a younger sibling, which would give her a little time to work one-on-one with another child. The pages are all self-explanatory; littles just need help reading the directions, and they’ll be ready and rarin’ to go.

These books serve to strengthen essential perception skills in a fun and engaging way.

Each of the four titles in the series contains 55-60 carefully designed exercises to help systematically develop a child’s visual, auditory, motor, and comprehension skills.

Studies show that the vast majority of children who use this program have significantly improved their learning abilities. What better reason do I need for keeping the Developing the Early Learner series on my shelf and reaching for them regularly when our grandkids come to call?

Developing the Early Learner books can be purchased separately or as part of Timberdoodle’s Kindergarten Curriculum Kit. Timberdoodle provided our family a free set of these books in exchange for this review, but all opinions expressed herein are my own.