Monthly Archive: April 2014

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Grammar Practice Sheets: Plurals, Endings, Past Tense Verbs

I made a couple of sheets so my older kids can review how to add endings (such as -ed, -ly, -s, -es and so forth). We reviewed when to double the final consonant and some of the irregular verbs.  I also included the answers (but they are not shown in the picture below). There’s nothing fancy about these sheets, but they’re free to download if your kids need some review:...

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Chinese Brush Painting Lesson

Today was the type of day when everything pulled together beautifully!  I set up paper and paints on the kitchen table and had all our books assembled to talk about Chinese brush painting, read from our novel and read from our Chinese history book. The kids ate it all up! We started with a lovely picture book called Brush of the Gods.It was a legend from about 762AD about a...

Our Top 5 Most Popular Science Posts 0

Our Top 5 Most Popular Science Posts

I thought you might be interested in some of my most popular science posts… The links will take you right to that post. We did a lot of hands-on science activities with these units. Those posts will link to some of our science activities. We will be moving to homeschoolden.com and all our printables will be moving there. Number 5 The Three Types of Rocks– Our Activities and a Free...

Nature Scavenger Hunt Free Printable 0

Nature Scavenger Hunt Free Download

Are you looking for free Nature Scavenger Hunt printables? We have several fun options!  Every spring, as the weather gets nicer and nicer we spend more and more time outdoors. We’ve been doing this scavenger hunt for years. I know we’re not alone because this printable has gotten well over 50,000 downloads since I first made it years ago!! We found a lot of cool critters that very first year we did...

Ancient China Worksheets 5

Ancient China Packet

We have been studying Ancient China this semester.  We are using  The Story of Ancient China (affiliate link) (see more about that below) as our spine, but also have read selections from the  Story of the World (affiliate link) and the Kingfisher History Encyclopedia. This is the packet that I made to go along with some of our readings. These are now included in our 100+ page Ancient China Unit. Recently,...

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Celebrate Earth Day with These Activities

  The celebration of Earth Day began over 40 years ago. It is a day to celebrate our planet and think about how we can help our environment. Did you know that the Environmental Protection Agency was established not long after that first Earth Day in 1970? The Clean Air Act also passed that same year. Now Earth Day is celebrated in more than 175 countries by an estimated 500...

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Earth Science Packet: Earth’s Atmosphere (Now Updated!)

Layers of the Atmosphere Packet (Now Updated!) Worksheets, Notebook Pages and Hands-On Activities! The Layers of the Atmosphere Packet has worksheets, notebook pages and various hands-on activities. It has well over 50 pages of materials.  Here are some of the topics we cover: Earth System Science — the “spheres” including the atmosphere, geosphere, hydrosphere, cryosphere, biosphere, and  magnetosphere the five layers of the atmosphere: Troposphere Stratosphere Mesosphere Thermosphere Exosphere The...

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15 Children’s Books Your 4-7 Year Old Shouldn’t Miss!

A couple of weeks ago, I shared a really cute idea for encouraging independent reading.  I thought I would also share some books my girls have LOVED between the ages of 4-7 or so: The Wish Cat,  Pinkerton, Behave!,   The Clown of God,  Stellaluna,  Caps for Sale  Tikki Tikki Tembo (affiliate links)   And some more books: The Gardener,    I Have a Sister–My Sister Is Deaf,   Big Bad...

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Weather Unit: Intro Notebook Pages (Free)

What is meteorology? What tools do scientists use to study the weather? These are some of the basic questions we covered as we started off our weather unit! Below are the pages we went over on our first day… it covers a few basics and some background about the history of meteorology.  I also rounded up some interesting weather facts and we read through those as well. Then we’ll be jumping...

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Free Easter Multiplication and Division Worksheets

Although a lot of the schools around us are having spring break, we have a family vacation coming up in another month so we’re homeschooling this week.  Over the weekend, I made some multiplication and division pages for DD and LD to practice their math facts. You can download this free by clicking on the link below. There are 3 pages. Free Easter Themed – Multiplication and Division LD is...

Egg-Speriment Packet - Free Egg Experiments for Kids 12

EggSperiment: Brush Your… errr… Egg (Part 4 of 4) and the Free Printable EggSperiment Pack

This activity helps kids understand how very important it is to brush your teeth every day! For this activity we chose coke, grape soda (we didn’t have any grape juice) and coffee. You can use any beverage that you think will stain your teeth.  The kids each selected two drinks and we let the eggs soak for several hours.   As the kids “brushed” their eggs, they were amazed at...

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4 More Science EggSperiments: (Part 3 of 4)

EggSperiment #4 Will an egg float or sink in water? What happens when we add salt to the water? We added a lot of salt to one cup and had plain water in the other cup. The egg in salty water floated, while the other egg sunk. We talked about why that was the case and how salt molecules changed the density of the water. Egg Activity #5 Do eggs...

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3 More Quick EggSperiments: How Strong Is That Egg? (Part 2 of 4)

EggSperiment 1: Why do eggs move the way they do? Have the kids roll an egg around on a table. Talk about why they are shaped the way they are.  Because eggs are a funny and oblong shape, they roll and wobble around in a certain way. Eggs wobble when they roll so they won’t go far from a mother hen and they will stay inside of a nest.  If eggs...

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Science Egg-speriments! Just in Time for Easter! (Part 1 of 4)

EggSpect the UnEggSpected with this series of fun Science EggSperiments! In this series you’ll find a dozen terrific egg activities to do with you kids. So… for the first EggSperiment… Because Easter is coming up, we devoted the past week to some fun science EggSperiments. This experiments requires you to soak a raw egg for two days in vinegar, so I’ll share this experiment first so you have time to...