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Elem-Children's Music 1 (6 yr old) / History: Japan Unit / Music
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published September 30, 2010 · Last modified April 1, 2016
I have found the glockenspiel to be a wonderful first instrument for LD and DD. (LD has since moved on to the piano.) In our music classes, we are learning the basics of rhythm (quarter notes, eighth notes and the half note at this point). And, I’ve introduced a few notes to the kids. The first song DD learned on the glockenspiel was Bee, Bee Bumble Bee (to the tune...
Arts and Crafts / History: Geography Activities / History: Japan Unit
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published September 23, 2010 · Last modified April 1, 2016
The theme of our music class these next two or three weeks is Japan. Each week we sang the continent song together. This week, we pulled out a new kind of map, a Montessori flag map. We learned where Japan was located and placed the flags we knew on the map. Then everybody piled outside to do a scavenger hunt for Japanese flags. (from Japanese Flag printables) We then looked...
Arts and Crafts / History: Geography Activities
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published September 16, 2010 · Last modified April 1, 2016
In our music class we are covering music from different places around the world. Easiest for me was starting with some music from Australia! I talked more about this in another post below. One of the outside activities everyone did this past week was to make their own dot painting. The picture on the left is a dot painting that we bought in central Australia about 10 years ago. It...
History: Geologic Timeline (Montessori) / Science: Dinosaurs Unit
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published September 3, 2010 · Last modified February 3, 2016
We had so much fun with our huge dinosaur project. A teacher on a website I saw somewhere (sorry, I forget where) mentioned having her class make a “trash-o-saurus.” I thought that was a brilliant idea, especially as we have SO much packing paper from our move. We looked around the yard for some items to help us make the structure (bone system) of our dinosaur. The previous owners left...
History: Geologic Timeline (Montessori) / Science: Dinosaurs Unit
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published September 2, 2010 · Last modified February 3, 2016
We came across a wonderful idea here at U.C. Berkley: The Dinosaur Body to learn more about body structure and how dinosaurs had to be perfectly balanced to stand and move. I read the paragraphs about the importance of balance and had the kids balance a ruler on their fingers and then add a light head and a heavy head (the heavy head made the ruler tip over and you...
History: Geologic Timeline (Montessori) / Science: Dinosaurs Unit
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published September 1, 2010 · Last modified February 3, 2016
We looked up the length of several well-known dinosaurs, grabbed our plastic models and then went outside to see how long they really were. We chose stegosaurus 30 feet T-Rex 40 feet apatosaurus 90 feet We looked at how long one foot was (we hadn’t done measuring in feet before as we’ve used the metric system up until now) — and then measured out the dinosaurs’ lengths using a 20...
History: Geologic Timeline (Montessori) / Science: Dinosaurs Unit
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published September 1, 2010 · Last modified February 1, 2015
At the beginning of our activity we looked at this real fern fossil (from Pennsylvania). We talked about how ferns have been around for millions of years and fossil records indicate they were around well before dinosaurs (we referred back to the chart we have on “what came first” from a previous day.) Then we went into our woods and looked for different kinds of ferns for making our own...
History: Geologic Timeline (Montessori) / Science: Dinosaurs Unit
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published September 1, 2010
In the past couple of weeks we read lots and lots of books about dinosaurs and have pulled out lots of different puzzles. LD got this for his birthday a couple of years ago and it was just perfect to pull out for this unit!
History: Geologic Timeline (Montessori) / Science: Dinosaurs Unit
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published August 31, 2010 · Last modified February 3, 2015
The Montessori teaching albums have an exercise called the “Clock of Eras.” I felt that would not work as well for our family as DD really doesn’t “get” the idea of a clock fully. I didn’t think it would really teach them the enormity of time as well as a long set of ribbons would… so instead I used the proportions of the clock and made a very long geologic...
History: Geologic Timeline (Montessori) / Science: Dinosaurs Unit
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published August 29, 2010
For those of you who know much about Montessori, you’ll recognize “The Black Strip.” This is an impressionistic activity that is meant to impress kids with the enormity of time on earth. Our version was the purple ribbon strip — and it is only 21 feet (as my ribbon ream was 7 yards!). But it still shows how very little time we humans have been on earth. I’m showing you...
History: Geologic Timeline (Montessori) / Science: Dinosaurs Unit
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published August 28, 2010
Montessori uses five “Great Lessons” as an introduction to all topics. It provides children with a big picture to demonstrate how sciences, art, history, language and geography are interrelated. This idea resonates well with our learning style. We did our own version of the first Great Lesson last year and LD still talks about it (and the science experiments and activities that followed). This year we’re off to explore the...
History: Geologic Timeline (Montessori) / Science: Dinosaurs Unit
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published August 28, 2010
I lost my internet connection this week. That’s a total bummer since writing on the blog is a major outlet for me since we’re so new to the area (and I know very few people yet). The kids and I had busy, fun week and I hope to start sharing some of our activities later this weekend. We’ve been working on our timeline unit (I’ll explain more soon, though a...
This week reviewed the seven continents (and sang the continent song). We used a different map than the one pictured here and moved magnetic continents to the correct place on the map. DD asks again and again, “Do we live in America now?” Even little ED has asked, “Is this home? Daddy home? LD home? Boomer (the dog) home?” and through the entire family. Change is hard, I think. ...
We did a country box exchange with a family who livesin Singapore. The kids were SO excited by all of thegoodies. We rushed to the map to locate Singapore,then tried playing the kids games, looked through thebrochures and postcards. We’ve done this with several families, but wewere “burned” by a family in Ireland who exchangedaddresses, but never sent anyone in our exchangegroup a reciprical package. Seems a shame and youwonder...
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.
