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Games for Thinking and Learning / History: Africa Unit / History: Geography Activities / Must Read
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published May 14, 2013 · Last modified March 3, 2016
We have been playing a couple of wonderful geography games in our homeschool. We have the Africa version, but you can also buy these same games in a version of Europe, Asia, or the Americas. The first is a card game called WorldWise Geography (Africa) I got for just a couple of dollars (it’s a different version that the one I linked to. It looks like the game has been...
History: Africa Unit / History: Geography Activities / Must Read
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published May 13, 2013 · Last modified March 26, 2016
We are winding down our school year and will be bringing our Africa unit to a close in the next week or so. The past couple of weeks we’ve been reading about East Africa. We’ve read about a number of countries and then learned a bit about the Maasai people. The Maasai are semi-nomadic people who live in Kenya and northern Tanzania. They have quite distinctive customs and dress and live...
History: Africa Unit / History: Geography Activities
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published April 17, 2013 · Last modified March 16, 2016
It has been quite a while since I talked about our African Unit. I think the last time I wrote, I shared the history pages I made about the Ghana and Mali Empires. We had also learned about some famous Africans such as Sundiata and Mansa Musa. The past couple of weeks, we’ve been learning more about contemporary Africa. We’ve been doing a lot of reading from Journey into Africa:...
History: Africa Unit / History: Geography Activities / Homeschool Den / Must Read
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published March 27, 2013 · Last modified March 16, 2016
Once again, we brought out our pin maps as we learned about the countries of West Africa. We used the flags of Africa from Montessori Materials to create country pins for our pin map (African Flags-page 1; African Flags-page 2). You can download and print out the map from the African Learning Pack I made back in September. I used a plain cork board underneath the map. As we were talking about the trade between...
History: Africa Unit / History: Ancient Egypt / History: Geography Activities / Homeschool Den / Must Read
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published October 15, 2012 · Last modified May 30, 2019
We started our unit on Ancient Egypt with a geography project. This is one we did about four years ago as well, but it was well worth repeating! We placed sand in an old plastic container. Then using toilet paper and paper towel rolls, we created the base for the winding Nile River. We covered that with aluminum foil. In upper Egypt we created the ‘mountains.’ We sprinkled potting soil...
A couple of years ago we bought a geography board game called 10 Days in Europe that has been a wonderful addition to our homeschool. It is so much fun, I really recommend it for anyone looking for a new game to add to your collection. I play this game with my 6 and 8 year olds, though I would say it’s more suited to the 8+ crowd (wonderful even...
Freebies / History: Geography Activities / Homeschool Den / Must Read / Science / Science: Biomes; Animal Habitats / Science: Rain Forests
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published June 14, 2012 · Last modified November 15, 2015
On Tuesday I shared the biomes pin map that the kids and I used. We looked not only at where the desert, tundra and grassland regions were, but took note of the rain forest regions of the world. Next I brought out the rain forest plant cards I had made several years ago. Although our main goal was to look at a history of chocolate to go along with our...
Freebies / History: Ancient Aztecs, Incas and Mayans / History: Geography Activities / Homeschool Den / Must Read / Science / Science: Biomes; Animal Habitats / Science: Earth Science Unit
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published June 12, 2012 · Last modified February 16, 2016
Are you asking yourself, “What in the world is a biomes pin map?” It’s a map that shows where the rain forests, deserts, grasslands, forest and tundra regions are located. A pin map is when you stick straight pins into the labels so kids can pinpoint where things are located. There you go, sounds fancy, but really it’s not! 🙂 Before we really delved into our study of rain...
Freebies / History: Geography Activities / Homeschool Den / Montessori (general info)
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published April 10, 2012 · Last modified April 1, 2016
We’ve been doing some background activities on Sir Isaac Newton since we’re starting a new unit on gizmos, gadgets and simple machines. Newton was from England so we did some geography lessons about the UK, Britain and Europe in general. We talked briefly about the difference between the United Kingdom, Britain and England. Then we brought a map over and the kids cut out their own map of Britain using...
Ages 2-6: Preschool (Age 4) / History: Geography Activities / History: This is the United States-Unit Study (grade 1) / Homeschool Den / Science: Earth Science Unit
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published March 22, 2012 · Last modified April 1, 2016
NAME THAT CONTINENT: One morning in collection (our group time) I brought out a beach ball globe. We took turns tossing the ball around the circle. Each time someone caught the ball they had to look at where their thumb had landed and had to name that continent. The kids quickly became silly, but we did manage to get a few rounds in for each of them. Another preschool geography...
History: Geography Activities / Montessori (general info)
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published February 29, 2012 · Last modified February 17, 2016
I brought out the materials to help ED (my 4 year old) learn about the seven continents again (though of course everyone joined in). Below is about a week’s worth of geography activities we did together. We went over the fact that a map is really a flat version of a globe. Then we went on to sing the continent song together. I was surprised that ED knew the entire...
History: American History / History: American West Unit / History: Geography Activities / Must Read
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published February 10, 2012
Our next topic was the Louisiana Purchase. Prior to 1803, the United States territory went only as far as the Mississippi River. Napoleon Bonaparte, the ruler of France, needed money for his wars in Europe and sold the Louisiana Territory to the U.S. for $15 million (3 cents an acre!). This nearly doubled the size of the United States. We’ve been using a map that shows the Louisiana Purchase and...
Ages 2-6: Preschool for ED - Fall 2011 (age 3 1/2) / History: Geography Activities
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published September 9, 2011
One of the Montessori materials we do not have is a sandpaper globe or a globe that shows just the 7 continents in their “proper” Montessori colors. That’s partly because we have a cute globe already (one that lights up and has various world animals on it). But for some reason we got a hankering to make our own globes. What better way to learn where the oceans are located...
Freebies / History: American Colonies / History: Geography Activities / History: This is the United States-Unit Study (grade 1) / Montessori (general info)
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published July 26, 2011 · Last modified March 14, 2019
I made some Montessori 3-part cards for the kids for our study of some of the well-known landmarks and symbols of the United States. These cards include landmarks such as the Statue of Liberty, the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, the White House, Mount Rushmore and more. You can download the US Landmarks and Symbols Cards at this link. We used these cards by talking about where they were located and placing them on our giant...
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.
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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.
