Homeschool Den

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Category: Language Arts – Grammar Spelling Reading Writing Categories

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Freebies / Homeschool Den / Language Arts: Writing / Must Read

How do I Help the Kids to Start Writing?! 5 Lessons Ideas for the Writing Workshop (Day 1)

You’ve set up a good writing space, have your supplies – pencils, journals, resource materials. Now what?!! This is the first in a series of 5 posts with lesson ideas to help young writers get started on their writing journey. Introduction: Writing Workshop Mini-Lessons I have spent a lot of time writing about why we use a writing workshop, how we set up and structure our writing workshop, and even went into...

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Homeschool Den / Language Arts: Writing / Must Read

Practical Pointers for Working with a Reluctant Writer (or any writer!)

How do you help a child who throws his hands up and declares he can’t write, refuses to write, only writes “I suck at writing” or prose of that sort?  Well, it has been a long hard journey for my son (10), but things have started to turn around this year and I wanted to share how we’ve made it over that hump… most of the time. *Have a space where...

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Freebies / Language Arts - Grammar Worksheets / Must Read

Free Grammar Practice Sheet: Quotation Marks, Said/Asked Words

I noticed in the kids’ writing journals that they weren’t using quotation marks correctly. I wanted to go over how to set up dialogues–the use of quotation marks and commas. I also wanted them to think about all the alternatives to using said or asked… there are dozens and dozens of great words. Grammar Quotation Mark Worksheet Said-Asked-Words List My kids love the song and video, What Does the Fox Say? ...

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Freebies / Homeschool Den / Language Arts: Writing

Wonderful Free Writing Resource for Young Writers

I was so excited to come across the Young Writer’s Survival Kit by Melissa Forney. It has been an amazing resource for our writing workshop. UPDATE: Sorry to say, the resource below (Young Writer’s Survival Kit) is no longer available.  You might want to check out our Writing Resource Packet. It is currently free. At times when it’s writing time, I haven’t thought of a writing mini-lesson for the day....

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Homeschool Den / Language Arts: Writing / Must Read

Biography Research Paper Resource Pack (Free)

Last semester, the kids worked on their first mini-research paper.  They hadn’t done a project like this before, so I took them step-by-step through the process of finding books and Internet resources, creating a bibliography, taking notes and writing a paper.  They had a “due date” and I graded their paper and gave them feedback on what they could do better next time. I wanted them to have the experience...

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Language Arts: Writing

Writing Workshop: Dr. Seuss Style

Yesterday I mentioned that we read the Sneetches (while talking about some of the lessons about the Civil Rights Movement: Civil Rights Movement Lessons – Prejudice Stereotypes Groups and More).  We talked for a long time about how it feels to be left out. We talked about fitting in and sometimes how it’s hurtful not to wear the right thing or look the right way. I told the kids a...

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Freebies / Language Arts - Grammar Worksheets

Their, They’re, There – Its, It’s Free Practice Sheets

The kids need a bit more practice distinguishing between their, they’re, there and its, it’s.  Here is a quick practice page I made for them. I’ll share that in case anyone else could use the review: You can find these grammar worksheets here: their there they’re – its it’s Practice Pages Other free grammar worksheets you can download: Here’s another similar post that I made for the kids more recently: they’re/their/there, it’s/its,...

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Freebies / Homeschool Den / Language Arts - Grammar Worksheets

Comma Rules and Practice Sheets (Free)

Last week I mentioned that we’ve been doing some grammar review again. We went over 11 comma rules. Then each day they’ve been doing  five or six sentences — adding in the comma where needed and identifying the comma rule that applies. My kids love science, so the comma worksheet has a lot to do with science this time. (There are sentences about the plague, polio, the Venus fly trap,...

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Freebies / Language Arts: Writing

Free Writing Workshop Resource Pack (30-pages)

A couple of weeks ago, I started writing a series about how and why we started our own Homeschool Writing Workshop. This is the fourth post in the series. Since it’s been a while, let me link to the first few posts in the series Creating a Homeschool Writing Workshop — Post #1: How and Why We Got Started with a Workshop Model. Creating a Homeschool Writing Workshop – Post...

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Homeschool Den / Language Arts: Writing

Creating a Homeschool Writing Workshop — Post #3 (Mini-Lessons and Useful Resources)

In the first post in this series, I explained how we had dabbled in writing, but had never found a “program” or curriculum that worked well for us.  I found some expert advice from primary classroom teachers, though, and set about creating a workshop that works for our family. I learned about the 6+1 writing traits (the basic qualities that make writing work and include: ideas, organization, word choice, voice, sentence...

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Homeschool Den / Language Arts: Writing

Creating a Homeschool Writing Workshop – Post #2 (Creating a Space)

Getting the Writing Workshop Area Ready One of the things that jumped out for me from all the reading I was doing about writing workshops is that it is important to have a space, routine and materials completely ready to go.  We had always fit in writing pell-mell whenever it fit in to our homeschool day. I wanted there to be a designated space (both physically and mentally) for our...

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Homeschool Den / Language Arts: Writing / Must Read

Creating a Homeschool Writing Workshop – Post #1

For the past six months, I’ve been alluding to the fact that we have really changed the way we approach writing.  Part of me has been wanting to write a post for ages, but I just wasn’t quite sure where to start.  Time to jump in! First, a little background.  LD has always been a reluctant writer. When he was K-1, we worked a lot on handwriting and copywork. We...

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Freebies / Language Arts - Grammar Worksheets

Comma Rules, Apostrophes, Underlining and Other Free Grammar Sheets

This post has a collection of free grammar worksheets I’ve made for the kids over the past couple of years. You’ll find practice sheets on the major comma rules, apostrophes, underlining and more: This first set, covers the basic comma rules.  We read over the rules together, then my son had to figure out which rule applied to each sentence and had to add in the appropriate comma/s. By the...

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Homeschool Den / Kindergarten / Language Arts: Writing / Science / Science: Human Body Unit

Free CDC Lesson Plans Grades 4-8 — Science Ambassador Program

Over the summer, I stumbled across the Center for Disease Control’s Science Ambassador Program. What a great find!  It has a series of lessons (maybe mini-unit would be a better term for them) on all kinds of various topics with challenging activities for students to learn about. Topics include — autism, birth defect, Hantavirus, HIV/Aids… and many more. What I like about their lessons is that they require the students...