Making Homeschooling Hands-On, Engaging, Meaningful & Memorable! Be inspired by all the possibilities!! Check out our unit studies, packets and printables!
Homeschool Den / Homeschool: Planning and Preparation / How to Start Homeschooling / Must Read / Starting to Homeschool
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published August 5, 2014 · Last modified March 17, 2016
I’ve been asked fairly regularly, “How do you know what to teach the kids?” That is definitely a daunting task, especially if you are pulling your child out of public/private school mid-year. Homeschool does not have to look like traditional school and there’s no rule saying that learning has to come from books or a certain set of books. There are a lot of homeschool curriculum options out there… and...
Homeschool: Planning and Preparation / How to Start Homeschooling / Starting to Homeschool
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published August 4, 2014 · Last modified March 18, 2016
When parents are thinking about homeschooling, they want to know exactly “how to start.” That’s such a huge question I’ve actually written a book… or rather, most of a book. It’s about 200 pages and I’m still not quite done! But I still want to write a shorter blog post to help those parents wondering what to do to get started homeschooling. First things first, make sure you find out...
Homeschool: Organizing and Cleaning / Homeschool: Planning and Preparation / How to Start Homeschooling / Starting to Homeschool
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published August 1, 2014 · Last modified August 2, 2015
The back to school sales are starting up where we live… and across the other side of the country, the kids’ cousins are back in the classroom next week. With that in mind, I thought it was time to share our homeschool shopping list. We try to top up on various supplies while the back-to-school sales are on. Here are some of the things that we use in our...
Freebies / Homeschool: Organizing and Cleaning / Homeschool: Planning and Preparation / Must Read
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published July 28, 2014
Behind the scenes, I have been starting to plan out our fall semester. One thing I wanted right away was a calendar packet. I made one last spring and found it really useful. I printed out two copies. One is for our school schedule. I will pencil in our units and trips to see what the semester will look like. The calendar includes various holidays since we’ll be reviewing some...
Homeschool Den / Homeschool: Planning and Preparation
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published June 10, 2014 · Last modified June 18, 2020
Yesterday I shared the end-of-year questionnaire I wrote up for the kids. There are some end-of-year things that I need to think about as well. Not only is it time to reflect on some of the things that went well (or didn’t), but it’s also time to take stock of what we/I need to do to get ready for next year. I’ll jot down supplies we need, things I need to...
Homeschool: Planning and Preparation
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published June 9, 2014 · Last modified June 18, 2020
The end of the school year is coming up quickly. I usually take some time to reflect how the year went for our family. We’ll talk about some of the things we covered this year… everything from really diving into the Writing Workshop for the first time to our huge units on India, Gandhi, the Civil Rights Movement and China… plus our science units on Simple Machines, Weather, Water… our adventures...
Homeschool Den / Homeschool: Our Homeschool (what our day is like, curriculum choices, etc.) / Homeschool: Planning and Preparation / Must Read
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published February 20, 2014 · Last modified January 28, 2018
One thing about homeschoolers is that each family has its own style. Some people have quite a structure/routine to their homeschool; some people unschool and support and follow the passions and interests of their kids. Our days are fairly loose, but we follow fairly traditional subjects. Homeschoolers often fall into different categories… Charlotte Mason, Montessori, Classical, or use online-curriculums. I would say we are eclectic, hands-on homeschoolers — meaning we...
Someone in one of my yahoo groups said that there was a 10cent sale on one of the publishers I have used a lot in the past, Homeschool Bits. She makes and sells lapbooks, unit studies, time lines and more. Her work is reasonably priced (most lapbooks are $1.00), but for the next day her work is on sale for 10 cents. Wow! I think the sale ends on Saturday...
Homeschool Encouragement / Homeschool: Our Homeschool (what our day is like, curriculum choices, etc.) / Homeschool: Planning and Preparation / Homeschool: Random Thoughts
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published January 18, 2014 · Last modified April 30, 2016
Someone recently asked me how to get started homeschooling. She was interested in creating some unit studies for her kids and wanted to know where to start. Since I tend to create our history and science units myself, I thought I’d try to share how I pull our units together. I’ve written a lot of related posts about homeschooling things like planning, preparation, assessing our long term and short term...
Freebies / Homeschool Den / Homeschool: Planning and Preparation / Must Read / Science
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published January 6, 2014 · Last modified February 23, 2016
This post is now located here: Homeschool Science Unit Checklist for Elementary and Middle School
Homeschool Den / Homeschool: Our Homeschool (what our day is like, curriculum choices, etc.) / Homeschool: Planning and Preparation / Must Read
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published January 2, 2014
Over the holidays I spent a lot of time away from the computer (blogging, that is), but I did pull together plans for the new semester. Here’s what’s on the agenda: Science: We’ll be starting an earth science unit on weather, wind and water. We’ll be starting with an overview of the Earth’s 4 systems and then will learn about the atmosphere before continuing on to wind, weather, etc. daily...
Homeschool Den / Homeschool Encouragement / Homeschool: Our Homeschool (what our day is like, curriculum choices, etc.) / Homeschool: Planning and Preparation
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published November 26, 2013 · Last modified July 27, 2018
I thought I would put a post together that helps give a flavor of what our daily homeschooling routine looks like. So many of my posts are compilations of our activities, but they don’t actually show what happens day-to-day. It’s about time to do that again (and I enjoy reading these posts later as the kids get older!) We have finally gotten back to a relatively normal schedule. (If you...
Homeschool Den / Homeschool: Our Homeschool (what our day is like, curriculum choices, etc.) / Homeschool: Planning and Preparation
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published September 23, 2013 · Last modified November 17, 2015
We’ve been back to school for about a month, I wanted to share how homeschool life is going. I love the posts where other homeschoolers share what they aspire to each day — and that’s what this post is. Not that everything on the list get checked off, but if we were to have an ideal day it might look something like this (this is the list that floats around...
Homeschool: Organizing and Cleaning / Homeschool: Our Homeschool (what our day is like, curriculum choices, etc.) / Homeschool: Planning and Preparation / Workboxes
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published September 5, 2013
Yesterday, I mentioned that my friend and I had some really lengthy conversations about homeschooling. We both really want to change up our writing time. I’ve been spending months and months reading books about writing and feel like I have some really wonderful ideas and direction for this part of our homeschool. When I got back, I decided I really wanted a spot where I could feature some of 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.
