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Homeschool Den / Language Arts - Grammar Worksheets / Language Arts: Writing
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published March 27, 2012
It has been a long time since I’ve written about the kids’ handwriting work. I started LD off on Handwriting Without Tears “Cursive Handwriting” when he was in first grade. This helped with his tendency to mix up his “b” and “d” letters. His writing is really quite nice now. He actually uses a combination of cursive and printing, but his writing is neat and legible. DD started Handwriting...
Homeschooling in the News / Language Arts: Spelling
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published March 15, 2012
A Six-Year-old Goes on to the National Spelling Bee A six year old homeschooler from Virginia is going to compete in the Scripps-Howard National Spelling Bee after winning the Prince William County spelling bee where she competed against elementary and middle school students last Friday. She started competing in her first spelling bees at the age of 3 1/2. Congratulations to Lori and good luck! See the article and...
Homeschool Den / Language Arts - Grammar Worksheets / Language Arts: Spelling / Language Arts: Writing
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published February 22, 2012
I’ve been printing out our own customized writing paper for DD when she does her spelling and narration work. She loves this paper and you can choose from all kinds of themes (animals, holidays, seasons, cartoon characters and more). You can also choose the size of the writing paper (from larger lines for beginner writers to standard rule for more seasoned writers). Anyway, since we get SO much use out...
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:...
Freebies / Language Arts - Grammar Worksheets / Language Arts: Spelling
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published January 18, 2012 · Last modified March 20, 2015
Instead of jumping straight back into All About Spelling, I had the kids work on words with silent letters last week. You can find this word sort in the language materials area at Montessori for Everyone. I made a couple of work sheets for DD and LD to do with these. You can download them here if you are interested. You can see the first two pages below. Words with Silent...
Language Arts - Grammar Worksheets / Language Arts: Spelling
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published January 8, 2012 · Last modified February 19, 2017
I found a bingo card creator and have made several cards so LD can do some reviewing. This is the “long A” sound words, but you can create any word list you want. Here is the link to the bingo card creator website. I’m often raving about All About Spelling (affiliate link) and just wanted to include a picture of the tiles. Each lesson presents a new rule and before...
DD is learning a couple of new poems from a very old book we own from 1904 called the Value of Cheerfulness. We both like these poems and I thought I’d share them with you all. And since the poems are inspiring, why not some awe-inspiring art (left). I love, love, love Albert Bierstadt’s sweeping landscapes of the American West. They might not need me– Yet they might– I’ll let...
Language Arts - Grammar Worksheets / Language Arts: Spelling
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published January 2, 2012
We are doing lots of spelling review over the holidays just to keep things fresh. Today and tomorrow I’ll share some of the spelling things we’re doing to keep things fresh. Every now and then we pull out our spelling word sorts. LD goes over the rules he has learned for spelling. DD is just now becoming familiar with the rules. We use these to supplement the wonderful program we...
Language Arts - Grammar Worksheets / Language Arts: Spelling
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published December 9, 2011
DD just finished up a lesson on plurals in her spelling program (we use All About Spelling which we love, love, love!). I saw this game over at First Grade and Fabulous which has the kids decide whether to add an -s or an -es. We played over and over. It was absolutely perfect timing for us, plus it’s really cute! Thank you so much, Deanne!
LD has gone over a lot of the different long-A sound word groups for spelling. I made this word sort to help cement in some of those families especially the trickier ones such as eigh — weigh, eight, neighbor, sleigh aigh — straight ea — steak, break You can download a copy here if you are interested.
To go along with the build-a-sentence pack I made, I put together some free writing prompts. I’ll share it here in case some of you find it helpful for your emergent writers. It is 18 pages.Click here for the Free-Writing Prompts Pack
Freebies / Language Arts: Writing
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published November 7, 2011 · Last modified March 7, 2016
Over the weekend, I made a set of Build_A_Sentence-Creative-Writing-Pack for my first-grader. Build_A_Sentence Creative Writing Activity Here are my plans for them: The first couple of pages are filled with ideas. She’ll go through and create sentences (silly or not) to write in her journal. Next we’ll work together to brainstorm ideas for some of the other themed sheets. I made about twenty different themed sheets with topics such as friendship, aliens,...
In collection (our morning group time) we talked about building super sentences. I used some materials I got from the Teacher Filebox (a subscription site that gives you access to most of the Evan Moor books from writing and reading to science and history). This was a great activity for DD and good review for LD (ages 6 and 8). First we looked at a simple sentence. The frog hopped.Then...
We had such a great homeschooling day on Monday. I was skeptical we’d get into the groove since we had just had my niece and nephew with us for four days. I brought in some spooky schooling, though and we had a terrific day! I went out and bought some dry ice and we did a number of experiments. You can see suggestions from Steve Spangler science and a couple...
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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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.
