Making Homeschooling Hands-On, Engaging, Meaningful & Memorable! Be inspired by all the possibilities!! Check out our unit studies, packets and printables!
Ages 2-6: Preschool (Age 4) / Ages 2-6: Preschool and Toddler Activities / Ages 2-6: Preschool for ED - Fall 2011 (age 3 1/2) / History: Geography Activities / Homeschool Den / Montessori (general info) / Must Read / Science: Rain Forests
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published May 21, 2013 · Last modified November 2, 2022
World Animal Packet: 100+ page packet focusing on the animals on every continent! It includes Montessori 3-Part Cards, Activity Sheets for every continent, printable continent cards, a world animal game, world animal pin map activity, and more! As I mentioned on Friday, ED has been working on her world geography. She has spent a couple of weeks going over the 7 continents again and working with some Montessori 3-part cards...
Ages 2-6: Preschool (Age 4) / Ages 2-6: Preschool and Toddler Activities / Ages 2-6: Preschool for ED - Fall 2011 (age 3 1/2) / Ages 2-6: Toddler/Preschool Activities / Language Arts: Reading / Must Read
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published May 4, 2013 · Last modified March 26, 2016
We love books! When we lived overseas, the local library was quite lacking and we wound up with quite a collection of board books by the time all three kids were born! ED still looks at these books pretty regularly and we’ll keep them around as she becomes a more confident reader (she’s still just reading simple 3 and 4 letter words). We actually have gotten rid of lots...
Ages 2-6: Preschool (Age 4) / Ages 2-6: Preschool and Toddler Activities / Ages 2-6: Preschool at Home / Ages 2-6: Preschool for ED - Fall 2011 (age 3 1/2) / Homeschool Den / Must Read / Science / Science Experiments
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published May 3, 2013 · Last modified March 3, 2016
Amazing, Fun Science To Wow the Little Ones! One of the wonderful things I love about homeschooling is all the hands-on activities you can do with kids. In the preschool years, I scoured the Internet and various science experiment books to find things that would intrigue and excite the kids… and that they could have a hand in doing. Most of the things we did were done using household ingredients....
Ages 2-6: Preschool and Toddler Activities / Ages 2-6: Preschool at Home / Ages 2-6: Preschool for ED - Fall 2011 (age 3 1/2) / Ages 2-6: Toddler/Preschool Activities / Freebies / Math: Preschool Math / Must Read
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published April 26, 2013 · Last modified February 17, 2016
The last few weeks I’ve been trying to put together some posts for those who are interested in doing some preschool activities at home with their kids. Today, I thought I’d highlight a few things I did with my kids for math in the 2 1/2-3 1/2 age range. Here are some activities I did with ED when she was 2 1/2. She was just learning to count up to...
Ages 2-6: Preschool (Age 4) / Ages 2-6: Preschool and Toddler Activities / Ages 2-6: Preschool for ED - Fall 2011 (age 3 1/2) / Arts and Crafts / Homeschool Den
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published January 18, 2013 · Last modified March 16, 2016
We made some play dough together at the beginning of the week and ED has been playing with it every single morning! Play dough is really easy to make and has a wonderful consistency. Here’s how we made made ours: 1 cup flour 1/3 cup salt 1 Tablespoon Cream of Tartar (in the spice aisle of your grocery store) 1 Tablespoon oil 1 cup of near boiling water almost...
Ages 2-6: Preschool (Age 4) / Ages 2-6: Preschool for ED - Fall 2011 (age 3 1/2) / Freebies / Holiday: Halloween / Homeschool Den / Math General Posts / Math: Preschool Math / Must Read
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published October 26, 2012 · Last modified February 21, 2016
ED is really enjoying those color in the bar-graph activities… so here are a few more, this time with Halloween kitties. I have them in her workbox and she can work on them when she’s interested (often when the other two are working on their math). I’m really enjoying the computer drawing pad! 🙂 If you’re interested in these sheets you can download the Counting Halloween Kitties If you missed...
Ages 2-6: Preschool (Age 4) / Ages 2-6: Preschool and Toddler Activities / Ages 2-6: Preschool for ED - Fall 2011 (age 3 1/2) / Ages 2-6: Toddler/Preschool Activities
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published February 21, 2012 · Last modified February 20, 2016
Today I want to share a couple of amazing preschool board games that ED really loves! ED turned four a couple of weeks ago. I always ask the kids what kind of cake they want. ED wanted a Beyblade cake (the spinning top that you see down to the right of the cake). Funny, huh?! I’m no major cake maker but the kids love helping to make their own birthday...
Ages 2-6: Preschool (Age 4) / Ages 2-6: Preschool for ED - Fall 2011 (age 3 1/2) / Freebies / Holiday: Valentine's Day
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published February 5, 2012 · Last modified January 31, 2017
ED has been working a lot on letter sounds and simple -at and -an words. I made this Valentine’s themed word matching activity for her to work on over the next couple of weeks. She has to attach the clothes peg to the matching word on the wheel. It took some cutting pasting to put it together, but if you’d like to make your own you can download the pages...
Ages 2-6: Preschool (Age 4) / Ages 2-6: Preschool for ED - Fall 2011 (age 3 1/2) / Montessori (general info)
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published February 3, 2012
While the other kids are working on their things, ED has lots of preschool activities in her workboxes. Here are a few things she’s done this past week or so: We played memory using -at words. We are going through “My -at book.” ED says the initial sound and then I help her smash the sounds together. This is definitely an activity we do together as she is not reading...
Ages 2-6: Preschool (Age 4) / Ages 2-6: Preschool for ED - Fall 2011 (age 3 1/2) / Language Arts - Grammar Worksheets
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published January 23, 2012
The girls got a new game for Christmas called A to Z, Jr by Discovery Toys. What a great game! The game itself is the perfect age for DD and LD (ages 6 and 8). It’s similar to the game Scattergories. Each person rolls the die and picks up a card. Then he/she has to name as many objects as they can for the category they rolled. Categories might include:...
Ages 2-6: Preschool (Age 4) / Ages 2-6: Preschool for ED - Fall 2011 (age 3 1/2) / Freebies / Montessori (general info) / Must Read
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published January 17, 2012
ED is ready to tackle the teen numbers. She often skips some of the numbers after 13. I am using a homemade version of the Montessori seguin board (download the packet I made here). It’s a board with lots of 10s in a row. The child then places a digit over the zero to make 11, 12, 13, etc. 1) First ED counted the number of animals. 2) Then she...
Ages 2-6: Preschool and Toddler Activities / Ages 2-6: Preschool for ED - Fall 2011 (age 3 1/2)
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published December 16, 2011
I feel like I haven’t written a long post about ED’s preschool work in forever. That’s because she’s been such an integral part of all our latest activities. She did all the owl crafts in our forest unit, did the dissection of the owl pellet. She takes notes and writes out her letters when the kids are taking notes on their science activities. She gets her own lapbook pages and...
Ages 2-6: Preschool and Toddler Activities / Ages 2-6: Preschool for ED - Fall 2011 (age 3 1/2) / Ages 2-6: Theme Time (age 2-4) / Science: Dinosaurs Unit
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published November 30, 2011 · Last modified February 3, 2016
Two weeks ago, I read The Magic Tree House: Dinosaurs Before Dark (affiliate link) to ED. This inspired a short themed unit on dinosaurs. Here are a few of the things we did, plus other dinosaur books and dinosaur puzzles that I don’t have pictured below. Last week we were lucky enough to top our theme-time unit off with a visit to the Gray Fossil Site in east Tennessee on our...
Ages 2-6: Preschool and Toddler Activities / Ages 2-6: Preschool for ED - Fall 2011 (age 3 1/2) / Freebies / Science: Biomes; Animal Habitats
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published November 29, 2011 · Last modified November 26, 2015
Forest Habitat Animal Sort – Vertebrates-Invertebrates ED’s next habitat study is on the forest. I made a set of cards for the kids to sort through. We’ll be sorting them by vertebrates-invertebrates and also into the five animal kingdoms: ( fish), amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals. Oh and by the way, I didn’t include any fish in this sort–I did include a photo of crayfish that LD found in the...
Do you believe education can be exciting, inspiring, and full of joy? We do too!
I love the quote by William Butler Yeats, "Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." It's about getting the kids involved, engaged, and fired up about learning (while juggling the rest of life too!)
A bit about me: I have my Master's from Brown University. I have more than 20 years of teaching experience. I was a high school teacher for many years both in the U.S. and internationally and also taught for the University of Maryland before leaving to homeschool my 3 wonderful kids.
To read more about us CLICK HERE.
Click on the image to find out more about the units and packets we have available.
This post has links to dozens of posts and resources both for new and veteran homeschoolers for everything from finding homeschool curriculum to general homeschool advice and encouragement.
Click on the image above to see the History Units we covered in our homeschool.
What science topics could I teach my 5-7 year old - Homeschool Science Curriculum
Click on the image above to see the Science Units we covered in our homeschool from elementary through middle school (and beyond!).
A list of the books we've used most in history, science, math, language arts, etc.
Click the image to check out our packets on Earth Science, Rocks and Minerals, the Atmosphere, Weather, Energy and More!
Units are also sold separately.
This is one of our most popular units. It covers the Layers of the Earth, Plate Tectonics, Earthquakes, Volcanoes and More! It is included in the Earth Science Bundle (see the picture/link above).
Click the image to see our Biology Units on Animal and Plant Cells; the Biology Unit on Biomes, Food Chains, Symbiosis; Scientific Classification & Taxonomy (Domain/Kingdom/Phylum/Class, etc.); Botany - Plant Kingdom and Oceans and Oceanography.
Click on the image to see our Animal Bundle - including the Animal Unit, Life Cycles, the Rainforest, Winter (Polar Animals) & Hibernation, Chameleons, Wolves, Cicadas and more!
The Human Body Systems, Skeletal, Digestive, Circulatory, Muscular, Nervous, Endocrine Systems and More (with lots of hands-on activity ideas)! We usually study a different body system each year.
Click on the image to see our units on the States of matter, Properties of Matter, Electricity & Circuits, and the Chemistry Unit (Get to know the Periodic Table in a fun way!)
This is a free checklist I put together of the various science units I hope to cover in the elementary and middle school years.
Do your kids know the 4 largest countries? Which countries have the most people? The longest river? This packet covers basic world and U.S. facts and also covers geographic features and land forms.
Click on the image to check out our 100-page unit on World War I.
We have used AAS for 6 years! AAS is an affiliate link.
Dozens of posts about how to create a homeschool writing workshop.
Click on the image to check out all of our fun K-2 Math Packets.
This is one of the best values we have... more than 20 PDFs with games, activities and worksheets to learn/practice the multiplication facts ($7.00).
Click on the image to discover some of the pages, posts and homeschool resources within our blog that might be the most useful for you including a long list of our freebies!
Click on the image to check out our 100+page Rocks and Minerals Unit.
This is a fun, hands-on unit for early elementary students!
How the body is organized from cells to tissues... organs to body systems
Click on the image to check out some of the Spanish worksheet bundles we have available!
Click on the image above to check out our German worksheets.
Click on the image to find out more about our units and packets.
