For over twenty-six years Timberdoodle has valued the trust you have put in us.

As fellow home educators we know that sometimes homeschooling choices can be overwhelming, but through the years we have made your decisions easier by doing the research for you. From the must-have, but less flashy products that every homeschooling family needs, to those products that are crazy-smart and will breathe new life into what could be dreary subjects, every product we offer goes through a rigorous selection process. We love our job, and the opportunity to meet the needs of thousands of homeschooling families.

And we are genuinely excited to see what God has in store for 2012! Our review team has discovered some pretty amazing items that we will reveal in the months ahead. Our in-house studio is busy shooting catalog pictures and how-to videos. Our research team is lining up trade shows, meeting with vendors and chasing down even more new products so that our product line-up is always fresh and relevant to today’s home educator. And our conference team is hoping to see as many of you as possible as we take Timberdoodle on the road this spring and summer.

In view of that, we felt it important to let you know a couple of changes that we will need to implement this February. Our vendors here and abroad have been tackled by today’s volatile economy. To survive they have had to raise their prices to us, which forces us to follow suit. Plus, in an attempt to avoid price wars, other vendors are insisting on a uniform price for their products, which we must implement to continue to sell their products. So while we purpose to continue offering a good value, you can expect some price increases February 1.

In addition, as you know, shipping companies across the board have executed another round of rate increases. Last year we subsidized shipping costs to the tune of nearly $200,000.00, a practice we can no longer engage in and stay in business. Although we hope to occasionally offer shipping specials, (become our fan on Facebook to be the first to know), regrettably our shipping rates must also increase February 1, 2012, to reflect more of our actual shipping costs.

When we hear of second-generation Timberdoodle enthusiasts, your children now homeschooling their own children, we are inspired to continue regardless of the tenuous economic climate. So from all of us, to all of you, thank you for more than two-and-a-half decades of support, we look forward to continuing to serve you.

The Deffinbaugh Family

We’d like to celebrate by offering you your very own winter treasure from Timberdoodle.com. We’ve set up this week’s giveaway as a simple treasure hunt. Just go to our site and search for 2012storm to see all 9 items that are part of this giveaway. Pick the one you want to win and you’re ready to enter the giveaway!

Enter the Drawing
You can enter one of two ways. Option one is simple, just leave a comment in the white box at the very bottom of this post (below the Facebook comments) answering this mandatory question: Which of the Winter Giveaway items do you pick if you win? (We will hold you to this, so choose carefully!) Or, if you prefer, you can enter using the PunchTab Widget below. The advantage to PunchTab is that you will be able to accumulate multiple entries, but if it doesn’t work for you please don’t despair; leaving a comment will enter you just as surely, and it only takes one entry to win! Drawing closes Monday, January 16th at noon PST and 1 winner will be drawn. You’ll have 48 hours to claim your prize! (Troubleshooting information and fine print about Timberdoodle Drawings can be found here.)

And the winners are…
RaShell S.
Penguins on Ice looks like a lot of fun! It’s supposed to be 72 degrees here on Monday!

Angie Wright
This was hard – there is an item for each member of our family – I will go with . . . . Penguins on Ice

Kayla Arrowood
We would love Penguins on Ice!

Kathleen Dozeman
Camouflage North Pole, please!

Andrea McEwen
We would love the Lost Trail book!

Construction kits just might be the most underrated curriculum ever. It’s not just us; research concludes that children learn a lot by designing and building things. Based on our own engineering background/ bias, we believe that construction is one of the most valuable educational processes available and that both learning to build and learning by what has been built should be a part of every family’s curriculum. Here are our top 10 skills your child will learn with their construction kit:

1 ) Visual Perception
It may be obvious that it takes visual perception to find the right pieces and place them well, but consider that whether your child is reading, finishing a puzzle, or doing open heart surgery, a proficiency in visual perception is mandatory!

2 ) Fine-Motor Skills
Boys especially seem to struggle with fine motor skills, particularly when it comes to writing and drawing. Amazingly enough though, they are often the most passionate about building – the natural remedy! The more they fine-tune their dexterity the easier “school time” becomes, for both of you!

3 ) Patience
Do you know anyone that couldn’t stand to be a little more patient? Construction takes time. Slowing down, reading the directions, doing it over when a piece has been placed wrong or a sibling knocks over your creation… all valuable character-building experiences!

4 ) Problem Solving
Some children simply lack the ability to trouble-shoot a situation and figure out the next step. Construction sets provide a structured opportunity to figure out what went wrong and fix it, if you’re following the directions. If you are designing your own models, you’ll have even more opportunities to problemsolve!

5 ) Spatial Perception
Probably the clearest picture of how important it is to be able to mentally convert 2D images into 3D objects is that of a surgeon. Knowing in 2D where the spleen is on a textbook page, isn’t nearly the same thing as being able to reach into an incision and find the damaged spleen!

6 ) Creativity
Not every creative person has artistic ability. I don’t! But construction can open the doors of creativity like no other tool. What if move this gear over here? Could I build that bridge with only blue pieces?

7 ) Ability to Follow Directions
Some children are natural rule-followers and need to be encouraged to be creative. Others need to constrain themselves to following directions, at least on occasion! If your child falls into that camp, construction kits are a natural way to encourage them in this skill, with the added benefit of a finished result they can show off to dad!

8 ) Pre-Reading Skills
Did you know that a child that cannot duplicate a pattern will be a poor candidate for reading and writing? Not only that, the use of pattern duplication is a proven approach to helping prepare children to understand abstract math concepts and higher order thinking. But if you have a scholar who rolls his eyes at working with pattern blocks and sighs deeply when asked to replicate a design with traditional four-sided blocks, you need construction kits!

9 ) Grasp of Physics Concepts
Friction, force, mass, energy… all basic physics concepts much more easily explained and grasped with a set of blocks and a ball than simply by studying a dry textbook definition!

10 ) Engineering Ability
Many “born engineers” are not drawn to textbooks. But set a construction kit in front of them and watch them explore pulleys, levers, wheels, gears… They’ll soon go from exploration to innovation and you’ll be amazed at their inventions!

Simple Decorating
Pearl usually takes on the task of sprinkling the house with nativity scenes, a camel tapestry and more. We have a wide variety of nativities, including a plastic one set up specifically for the Bible Study toddlers to play with, a lovely wooden nativity from my grandparents, a handcrafted set with beleaguered characters and meaningful-only-to-us accessories, and the newest addition, a ceramic nativity lovingly brought back from Peru by my cousin.

Monday Meals
I know, it’s not the most brilliant name, but for years now we have had a tradition of feeding the entire Timberdoodle crew a hot meal at noon every Monday from Thanksgiving to Christmas. This year’s menus have included cheesy potatoes with kielbasa, cookies, and even a breakfast theme with egg casserole and “World Famous” homemade cinnamon rolls!

Shoeboxes
We love building shoebox gifts with our whole Bible study! This year our small group shipped 18 boxes, and were excited to already hear that they have arrived in the Philippines.

Christmas Eve Service
Our small church is hosting its 4th annual Christmas eve service, a highlight of our year. Lots of worship through songs and Scriptures, complete with communion and fellowship (cookies) afterward. From making cookies and arranging the sanctuary to running sound and printing invitations, our family loves to take an active role in this event.

Christmas Day
With Christmas falling on a Sunday our Christmas Day is looking busier than ever. We’ll start with our regular involvements in our church service, then have Grandma and Grandpa over for a noontime Christmas dinner. Pearl’s birthday is on the 23rd, so we’ll have a combined Christmas/Birthday celebration. After that, there are plans for all who want to participate to head over for our first time helping out at a Christmas event helping the homeless in our area.

Wiseman Party
We save our gifts for New Years, to avoid being distracted from Jesus on Christmas day. (We don’t wait for Epiphany – mostly to take advantage of the time off at New Years!)
Our celebration has varied a great deal through the years. When we were young we each picked out a “family gift” that the whole family would enjoy, then went on a long treasure hunt to find them. I think this year’s celebration will likely include a treasure cake (chocolate cake with caramel in it) and watching videos as a family, in addition to camel bags.

Camel Bags
Camel Bags have been part of our Christmas/New Years tradition for years. (We debated about outgrowing this tradition, but it is so much fun that we weren’t all ready to move on!) In a nutshell, we each buy small, identical gifts for every member of the family, including ourselves. The trick is to find something creative that everyone in the family would enjoy – toothbrushes, candy, coats and flashlights have all been given in past years. In recent years we all decided to add a matching policy where each person donates an amount equal to what they’ve spent on gifts to their favorite charity. That just helps us keep our focus, while still enjoying giving gifts. Click here to read more about Camel Bags and here for directions to make your own Camel Bags. (If you actually do make your own, we would LOVE to hear about it!)

Handmade Nativity
Each year we each make an angel, shepherd, wiseperson, animal or other nativity prop to add to our hand-crafted nativity scene. In recent years we’ve worked hard to incorporate some element of the past year into the figure – angelic Krissy for the year we spent so much time with her, wise woman with a walker for the year we did a lot of Grammy care, cookies for the year of baking… This tradition is made MUCH more interesting by the fact that none of us are gifted in sculpting!

Specifically taken to make Krissy her own photo book of the Christmas story, this was a fantastic way to involve her in the Christmas story.

What We’re Not Doing in 2011 – Christmas Reenactment
For year’s we’ve reenacted the Christmas story but for the past few years our emphasis has instead been on the Christmas Eve Service. If we had the time and energy, this is a tradition I’d love to revisit, it was such a delight to be able to tell the Christmas story at the local nursing home and see the residents light up watching the little kids!

Links You’ll Probably Love:

Why Lie To Your Kids About Santa?
We really enjoyed this article and Clint’s perspective. Be sure to click over to our Facebook page as well to join the discussion!

3 Tips for making Christmas More About Christ
We were surprised by the strong reactions we received from this letter – some in agreement and others absolutely horrified at our perspective!

Don’t forget the Heart!
Our 2009 December newsletter departed from the controversial to remember what is really important at Christmas.

You Don’t Celebrate Christmas?
I loved this post by Renee of Baker’s Dozen and Apollo XIV, in fact it inspired this recap of our own family’s Christmas traditions.

One of the Christmas traditions our family has done for over 20 years now is reenacting the Nativity story. And so in honor of the season, for the next couple of weeks we will be posting short video clips of our enactments from the past.

Our reenactments have taken many different twists over the years. Beginning in the early years we toddled door-to-door amongst homes of relatives asking for lodging and of course being turned away, “No room. Sorry.” As we grew older we used puppets which we took to the homes of older relatives and retold the Story again. But when Pearl was almost a year old we began reenacting the Story ourselves “authentically” arrayed in various sheets, oversized t-shirts, towels and more!

Videotaped by Mom these tapes have provided years of entertainment and allowed us to move the whole production down to the grandparents by effortlessly pushing in the videotape.

As we grew, Abel became a bit weary of filling all the male roles and so we began growing the cast, from next-door relatives to whole church productions to multi church participations. Our locations have also changed from being held in our small mini-farm barn to the basement of our then unfinished home to most recently the dining hall of one of our local nursing homes. This year we are hoping that we can hold it for the first time ever in our church’s new building!

So here is the first year in all it’s “glory”
Laugh heartily, we do!!

If you know our family, you know we have some odd family traditions including limiting our Christmas decorations to a nativity theme (we don’t even have a tree!) and putting off gift giving to New Years. Of all of our traditions though, Camel Bags raise the most eyebrows. “Camel what?” And so we launch into this explanation, which seems to get weirder as we go.

We want to celebrate Christmas without making it about presents, but we love presents too. That’s why our gift-giving takes place on New Years Day. Camel bags allow us a way to give each other small, stocking-type gifts in our own unique way.

Unlike a traditional stocking, Camel Bags are not to be filled by Mom and Dad, nor are they stuffed with expensive gifts specific to each child’s tastes. Instead each child buys 2 different gifts for each person. The catch? We purchase 5 of the same gift, wrap them up, and place them in each Camel Bag, including our own!

Each year the contents vary greatly – from secretly-homemade-cookies to electric toothbrushes, immensely practical flashlights, and even coats!

We’ve talked about letting this tradition go, as it is hard to say that any of us really ‘needs’ anything. We just couldn’t do it though – it has become a favorite wacky tradition for us. Greed would ruin the fun though, so one way we guard our hearts is by donating the same amount we spend on gifts to a favorite charity.

This year we’ve decided to scale back a bit, and limit ourselves to $5 or less (approx – giver discretion advised!) gifts, with the idea that any extra funds will be set aside for a family vacation early next year.

We now have directions for making your own Camel Bags here, in case you are curious!  We’d also love to hear your traditions – what does your family do that makes Christmas special for you? Anything you have to explain to new friends every year?

On our honeymoon more than 28 years ago, we were confronted with the question, “should a Christian celebrate Christmas?” Having read and studied both sides of the controversy, we’ve come to the following conclusion. While we acknowledge that Jesus wasn’t actually born in December, it is the time that the world pseudo-recognizes it. And, although the world’s acknowledgment of the Messiah’s birth is nearly choked out by the commercialism of the season, we as Christians desire to use whatever means we can to redeem the time.

Our thoughts are that the best way to accomplish this is to celebrate in a distinctive way, one that helps our children to focus on this wondrous act of God. But how? Here are a couple ideas that have worked in our family.

Reenact the Christmas story.
Every year from toddlerhood onward, our children have participated in this amazing account in one form or another. When they were just toddlers they memorized the verses and used the Betty Lukens felts to tell the story to indulgent relatives. As the children got a bit older we began to have them act out the account, originally with our family only. Later we roped in families from our Bible study. Now it has evolved into a multi-church event performed at a local nursing home. Since 1994 we have videotaped these presentations.

Infuse your celebration with symbolic reminders of whose birthday it is.
For younger children a natural way is through meals: large shredded wheat cereal can depict the hay in the manger; pocket bread, mozzarella cheese, dates and figs for lunch could replicate a shepherd’s meal, with, of course, shepherd’s crooks (candy canes) for dessert. Last year, we made angel cookies to take with us to the local nursing home for the residents to snack on while we performed our nativity pageant. Directions are available here.

Finally, consider an alternative to the Christmas stocking.
This will be hard for those of you with handmade stockings of emotional value, but consider what a stocking represents. It is an obvious link to the most corrupting influence in this holy season, Santa. While the ancient story of a generous old man may have some truth to it, today’s lies of Santa benefit no one except Satan. Only God knows when you’re sleeping, knows when you are awake, and knows your full sin status. As a mother, it would be tempting to wag my finger and threaten about Santa’s gifts. It is far better to point my child to God and to speak of His daily gifts to us, to say nothing of the gift of eternity that Santa could never deliver.

These are just a few ideas that have worked well for our family through the years. What is critical when planning your family’s holiday is to plan in such a way that will leave no doubts in the minds of your children about what is most important to you on that day.

May God be glorified as you make those decisions.

Dan, Deb, Joy, Hope, Grace, Abel & Pearl

Dear Friends,
This year we are taking a slight departure from our annual bashing of secular Christmas, to urge you to take inventory on the condition of your children’s hearts.

What if you discovered, quite by accident, that your married daughter was flirting with the UPS man? Would you not beg her to remember the vows she made before God and man? And wouldn’t you feel sick if she laughed and continued to engage in such destructive behavior?

Paul, in his second letter to the Corinthians implored “…I feel a divine jealousy for you, since I betrothed you to one husband, to present you as a pure virgin to Christ.” If your children are to spend eternity with Christ, as a godly parent, don’t you see a need to train your children to treasure Him above everything else?

For all the warmth and joy that the Christmas season can bring, it can also become a cesspool of impulsive passions. Or it can be a season of opportunities, uniquely designed to sanctify your family. The caroling missed because of the flu, the must-have toy not purchased because of a scaled back budget, the annual Christmas pie tossed because the cat sampled it, are all occasions to take a peek into where your child’s affections are. For all the hoopla surrounding Christmas, there is disturbingly little emphasis placed on pleasing the One whose birth we are celebrating, and wholly too much importance placed on making ourselves happy

Samuel Rutherford, a Scottish Presbyterian theologian (1600-1661), wrote “… if you see a man shut up in a closed room, idolizing a set of lamps and rejoicing in their light, and you wish to make him truly happy, you would begin by blowing out all his lamps; and then throw open the shutters to let in the light of heaven.”

This Christmas, may we all remember to whom we are betrothed and set our affections fully on Him,

Enjoying Timberdoodle products in a whole new way,
Dan, Deb, Joy, Hope, Grace, Abel, and Pearl

Not sure where to start? Try browsing our gift categories:

Enter the Drawing
Want to win a Timberdoodle Gift Certificate? You can enter one of two ways. Option one is simple, just leave a comment in the white box at the very bottom of this post (below the Facebook comments) answering this mandatory question: What will you spend your $25 on?Or, if you prefer, you can enter using the PunchTab Widget below. The advantage to PunchTab is that you will be able to accumulate multiple entries, but if it doesn’t work for you please don’t despair; leaving a comment will enter you just as surely, and it only takes one entry to win! Drawing closes Monday, December 12th at noon PST and 1 winner will be drawn. You’ll have 48 hours to claim your prize! (Troubleshooting information and fine print about Timberdoodle Drawings can be found here.)

The Winner Is:
And our gift certificate winner is Hallie Lindal, who says, “I would get my little one Into the Forest! I think she would really enjoy it!” Winner courtesy of Random.org!

What is Your Email Schedule?
With so many new additions, sale prices and exciting bundles we had to run three back-to-back sales just to make sure you were aware of all we had to offer before you did all your shopping! However, we do not intend to make a practice of sending emails that frequently! You can expect (approximately) a weekly email advising you of new additions, short-term special offers and other things you’ll want to know.

But It Might Go On Sale Later
We’ve all been there. You finally make up your mind and invest in a product, only to have it go on sale a day, week or month later. It is frustrating, to say the least, and left us racking our brains to figure out how to reward early buyers instead of penalizing them. We think we found the perfect solution!

120 Days, 120% Price Guarantee
For 120 days after you buy an item from us, we’ll guarantee that you get our lowest price, or we’ll reimburse you and add an extra 20% for your trouble. All you have to do is send us an email at 120refund@timberdoodle.com and we’ll refund you!

Say That Again?
Suppose for a moment that you bought SmartMax Extreme when we first announced it, paying $175. A great deal to be sure, but a few days later you read that we are celebrating its award as the Timberdoodle Baby/Toddler Must-Have of 2011 by discounting it even further for just 3 days, to $150! Rather than regretting your wise decision to buy early, you simply email 120refund@timberdoodle.com stating that you’d like to take advantage of the 120 guarantee. As soon as we get your email we leap into action, verifying your eligibility and processing the refund. The next morning you check your emails and find that you were refunded $30 ($25 + 20%) – making your early purchase cheaper than the sale price!

Surely You Have Fine Print
Yes, but we’ve kept it as minimal as possible: This offer applies to our regular inventory, but excludes closeout, damaged or free items. To be eligible you must have purchased the exact item from us within the past 120 days and you must request the refund during the sale.  While most refunds are issued within 24 hours, it can take up to a week to process. See? Simple enough! (We occasionally get a question about price-matching. We do not offer that; instead we want to be sure you always get Timberdoodle’s lowest price.)

Ready to shop? Browse our amazing gift collections for ideas or drop by to see our current sales!