Making Homeschooling Hands-On, Engaging, Meaningful & Memorable! Be inspired by all the possibilities!! Check out our unit studies, packets and printables!
Science / Science Experiments / Science: Earth Science Unit
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published January 31, 2011 · Last modified July 19, 2018
Just adding this in on Tuesday: I found out today that I have Pneumonia which is why I’ve been feeling ever so lousy. I first saw this activity last year at The Learning Ark. It fit in perfectly with our Earth Science unit. There is also a similar activity using a hard-boiled egg in the book we are using for this unit, How the Earth Works by Michelle O’Brien-Palmer. One...
Ages 2-6: Penguin Unit / Ages 2-6: Theme Time (age 2-4) / Homeschool: Useful Resources (websites books etc)
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published January 30, 2011
DD enjoyed this penguin computer game. The object was to move your penguin around to keep the egg warm by avoiding the other penguins and obstacles or predators that might get in your way. Here’s the link:http://www.nationalgeographic.com/marchofthepenguins/game/ Also at the national geographic website was a crittercam game. She had to spot the various animals of Antarctica — the Emperor Penguin, krill, skua and other things. http://www.nationalgeographic.com/features/03/crittercam/antarctica/ Finally, she played a...
Ages 2-6: Penguin Unit / Ages 2-6: Theme Time (age 2-4) / Homeschool: Useful Resources (websites books etc)
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published January 30, 2011
If you are working on Arctic Animals, this first grade teacher made a very cute science journal which incorporates polar bears, penguins, walruses, the arctic fox and snowy owl: Oceans of First Grade Fun.She also has a set of penguin “What Comes Between” math cards. The child has to place the number that comes in between 31 __ 33 or 36 __ 38. What’s nice for us is that they...
Our entire family needs a collective sigh of relief. We’ve been hammered and as a result we’re just plain tired. Let’s see, so I wrote about the furnace going out. Then LD got a virus. Well, the day he felt better, I got a slightly different virus. I was so sick I had to call Dad home from work (last Friday). By midafternoon I couldn’t get out of bed. I...
Ages 2-6: Penguin Unit / Ages 2-6: Theme Time (age 2-4)
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published January 21, 2011
It’s taken a while to sort through my pictures to show what we have been doing with our penguin unit. Most of the activities were for ED, though there were a few sprinkled in for DD and LD as you’ll see. DD has been working diligently on a penguin/Antarctica lapbook. We’ll share pictures of that soon. So here’s the first cute activity. I took bottle cap letters from Confessions of...
It has been a while since I talked about DD’s reading (she’s 5). We are still working our way through EPS Primary Phonics Storybooks. I can’t recommend this set of readers highly enough! I have found them absolutely perfect after the Bob Books. Each book (like the purple one at the left and the one straight below it) is 16 pages long and the story is reasonably good. DD reads...
LD is slowly on the mend. He had his first bite to eat in more than two days a bit ago. Meanwhile, here are a few things ED did with me this morning. I pulled out a few of the letters from a large letter floor mat, introduced them to her one at a time and called out a letter for her to jump to. She and DD enjoyed this...
LD is quite sick–hasn’t eaten for two days, is lethargic, feverish and sleeps most of the day/night. Will update soon. Poor guy.
Here’s the scene: Our furnace has been on the fritz! This morning it was a chilly 59F/15C degrees in the living room area and even colder in our bedroom! (Nowhere near as cold as it is outside, though.) Everything is draped in ice. It’s actually quite beautiful. Except that EVERYTHING is covered in ice. Imagine backing out of our garage… and driving up THIS driveway! It took nearly an hour...
Here are the cards and game boards I made for LD. I cut them out and mounted them on a file folder so you can’t see through the back! The red cards are the 4s times tables plus two enemy tie fighters. The game board has five slots. To play the game all the red cards are turned upside down. Each player takes a turn choosing a card and solving...
This is a bit hard to see, but we made these skip counting rolled papers. As you unfurl the paper it reveals the answer to 4×1, 4×2, etc. LD took a lot of time drawing different styles of star fighters in each rectangle! Then we worked together to fill out the other chart skip counting up through 40. We used these sheets as a reference for the next skip counting...
Hi! It’s great to be back online after a very full holiday season. We’re now back into the swing of things and I’d like to share some new activities the kids and I have started into. I’ll start first with my 5 year old’s math activities the past couple of days: DD is learning basic addition. This week we’re working on the 5s. I gave her the colored construction paper...
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.
