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Language Arts: Books: Children's Literature / Language Arts: Reading
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published June 15, 2015 · Last modified April 13, 2016
My kids really love to read. My daughter in particular is a voracious reader. She reads any spare moment she has. My son likes to read too and always gets his breakfast and settles in for 45 minutes to an hour with a good book. I thought I’d share some of the books and series the kids have really loved this year. Actually this first recommendation came first from my son...
At the beginning of the week, I thought it would helpful for the kids to think about some fundamental questions about writing… Why do we write? Why do we read? What makes for a good story? What makes a story interesting? What inspires you? What kinds of techniques can we use in our writing? What writing habits work best for you? And finally, I had the kids brainstorm alternative words for...
Homeschool Den / Language Arts - Grammar Worksheets / Language Arts: Writing
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published May 14, 2015 · Last modified May 16, 2015
What skills do I want the kids to have in order to become successful writers? For this post, I shared a list of some of the language and literary skills I want the kids to build in elementary and middle school. These are topics and terms I want the kids to be familiar with. As they get older I hope they are able to use and incorporate these naturally into their own...
Homeschool Den / Language Arts - Grammar Worksheets
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published April 29, 2015 · Last modified February 24, 2016
We are reviewing some of the basic grammar rules (again) and I wanted to share this sheet I made for the kids about semicolons. These sheets covered these 4 rules: Use a semicolon to join two or more closely related independent clauses that are not connected with a coordinating conjunction (and, but, or, nor, for, yet, so). Use a semicolon to join two closely related independent clauses that have a...
Homeschool Den / Language Arts - Grammar Worksheets / Language Arts: Spelling
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published April 27, 2015 · Last modified September 22, 2023
Here are some fun activities to work on the long A sound. I made these sorting cards activities, game board, and bingo cards to help ED with words spelled in these combinations: a, ai, ay a_e, ei, eigh and ey. She has had a lot of fun with this packet and begs me to play “just one more time”! That’s a win for me! She hasn’t yet worked on all...
Language Arts - Grammar Worksheets / Language Arts: Spelling
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published April 23, 2015 · Last modified October 12, 2018
I’d like to share some free Contraction Worksheets and Printables with you today! ED is working on contractions such as I’m, she’s, we’re, can’t, doesn’t, won’t, wouldn’t, etc. She definitely needs more practice with these so I made some cupcake themed activities for her to practice and polish up on this grammar skill! To use the cupcakes, you should print pages 2 and 3 out on cardstock and cut the cupcake...
Homeschool Den / Homeschool: Our Homeschool (what our day is like, curriculum choices, etc.) / Homeschool: Planning and Preparation / Homeschool: Useful Resources (websites books etc) / Language Arts - Grammar Spelling Reading Writing Categories / Language Arts - Grammar Worksheets / Language Arts: Spelling / Language Arts: Writing
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published April 3, 2015 · Last modified May 6, 2017
So, what does our family do for our homeschool language arts curriculum? I’ll share what we’ve been using for 1st through 6th grades. Over the past week, I’ve gotten three separate emails and FB messages asking about what we use for language arts — spelling, grammar and literature. It must be that time of year again when we start thinking about our plans for next year. 😉 I’ll start with...
Language Arts - Grammar Worksheets
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published March 4, 2015 · Last modified February 24, 2016
I made two new grammar practice sheets for the kids that I’ll share with you today. One sheet has the eight apostrophe rules. The kids have to place apostrophes where necessary and decide which rule is being used. The other sheet requires them to chose the correct form of they’re/there/their or its/it’s. The answer key for that is also included (though not shown below). 🙂 Apostrophe Rules and Practice...
Homeschool Den / Language Arts: Writing
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published February 27, 2015 · Last modified February 26, 2015
How are we introducing note taking and research skills into our homeschool? One skill that middle and high school students (and beyond!) need is the ability to take notes–either by picking out important key points from books and resources they read or from listening to a speaker or lecturer. In the elementary years, I’ve slowly been trying to help the kids build these skills. I wanted to write this post...
Homeschool Den / Language Arts: Writing
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published February 19, 2015 · Last modified July 27, 2018
We absolutely love our homeschool writing workshop. We don’t use any special homeschool writing curriculum, instead we’ve designed a writing routine that works really well for us. (In fact my reluctant writer now really loves writing! More about that in How/Why we needed a change in our writing program!) Today, I wanted to share a mini-lesson series I did with the kids on the literary device, conflict. I learned these...
Language Arts - Grammar Worksheets / Language Arts: Writing
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published January 21, 2015 · Last modified March 18, 2016
This writing workshop MiniLesson really didn’t involve much writing, but boy did it drive its point home! It was all about adding amazing details. This is sometimes referred to as “Show, Don’t Tell.” I wanted the kids to really understand how details not only add depth to the story, they can help drive the storyline. That was my objective, though I didn’t tell the kids that when we started out!...
Homeschool Den / Language Arts - Grammar Worksheets / Language Arts: Writing
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published January 15, 2015 · Last modified March 18, 2016
The writing workshop is more than just sitting down together and putting pencil to paper. This is also our time to learn about the writing process, to talk about different writing genres, and to learn about different literary techniques. During our writing workshop, we take the time to explore writing as a craft. About a year ago, I shared a number of writing workshop mini-lessons. I wrote a series of...
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published January 7, 2015 · Last modified November 5, 2015
We had our first day back on Monday and it really went well. The engineering activities I mentioned in the post on Monday morning were a HUGE hit and those activities will definitely be fun to share with you, but for right now I really wanted to write about our Writing Workshop. What I love and adore about our WW is that it virtually runs itself now. You would expect some...
Ages 2-6: Preschool and Toddler Activities / Ages 2-6: Preschool for ED - Fall 2011 (age 3 1/2) / Homeschool Den / Language Arts: Reading
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published January 2, 2015 · Last modified February 20, 2017
How do you help your child build early literacy skills? Here are 12 fun activities to help build early reading skills! These are activities we did with CVC words and basic sight words to make the learning process fun and engaging!! The first step in learning to read is to make sure your child knows their letter sounds. We shared lots of ideas about that in our Preschool at Home...
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.
