Making Homeschooling Hands-On, Engaging, Meaningful & Memorable! Be inspired by all the possibilities!! Check out our unit studies, packets and printables!
Homeschool Encouragement / Homeschool: Random Thoughts
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published March 5, 2015
Don’t tell my kids… but I’m pretty tired…. not with school itself, but with being the mediator. It’s mid-semester for us and I’m not as patient with the kids as I should be… well, or a better way to put that is that the kids are really grating on each other’s nerves and I can’t always nip it in the bud. We’ve had to have talk after talk about treating...
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 / Lapbooks / Science: Dinosaurs Unit
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published March 2, 2015 · Last modified October 25, 2022
DD had an amazing time with this Dinosaur Unit! She did everything from learning many of the dinosaur’s names, to finding out what they ate, what period they lived in, and a number of dinosaur games along the way! This packet covers 15 dinosaurs: Allosaurus, Ankylosaurs, Apatasaurus, Brachiosaurus, Herrerasaurus (one of the earliest dinosaurs), Iguanodon, Parasaurolophus, Plesiosaurus, Pteranodon, Quetzalcoatlus, Spinosaurus, Stegosaurus, Triceratops, Tyrannosaurus Rex, Velociraptor. There are Montessori 3-Part cards...
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 / Homeschool: Planning and Preparation / Homeschool: Random Thoughts / Homeschool: Useful Resources (websites books etc)
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published February 26, 2015
Hi Everyone, Not everyone uses Facebook and with the way Facebook works now, the majority of my readers don’t see what I post to Facebook. So, I thought that I’d highlight some of my older posts here on the blog as well every now and then. 20+ Thoughts for the Busy Homeschooling Family: 11 Year Old Shares Her Thoughts About Homeschooling Last winter on a snowy day like this one, I...
This week my kids are going over the German verb “sein” (to be)… and reviewing all the pronouns (ich, du, er, sie, es, wir, ihr, Sie, sie). These are some very simple worksheets they filled out. These review… ich bin du bist er ist sie ist es ist wir sind ihr seid Sie sind sie sind I know we get a lot of hits on the free German worksheets, so...
As many of you know, my youngest is just starting to learn multiplication. There are two wonderful resources I thought I should mention again. Multiple Ways Multiplication: This is an *AMAZING* resource from the Positive Engagement Project to help kids learn how to multiply. This 295 page pdf download is free! Acing Math One Deck at a Time is also from the Positive Engagement Project. It is 70 pages and has...
Homeschool Den / Homeschool: Planning and Preparation / Homeschool: Useful Resources (websites books etc) / How to Start Homeschooling / Starting to Homeschool
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published February 23, 2015
Homeschool Resources: Today I have several great resources for you. The first is a new page of some of the books we use in our homeschool. You’ll see that new button in the left side bar. I hope to keep a fairly current list of recommended books from different subject areas (history, science, language arts, math & critical thinking, art). How to Find Homeschool Curriculum: Since the list above is mostly just...
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published February 20, 2015 · Last modified May 10, 2015
Middle Ages Unit: Worksheets on the Medieval Church & the Development of Monasteries This week we talked about Christianity in the early Middle Ages in our homeschool. We read about how the Church was organized and how monasteries began. The history book we are using [primarily Early Times : The Story of the Middle Ages (affiliate link) by Suzanne Strauss Art] went into detail about a couple of the historical figures that went...
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...
Arts and Crafts / History: Middle Ages / Homeschool Den
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published February 17, 2015 · Last modified September 13, 2018
Last week, we combined our study of the Vikings with a new art project — woodburning! We have just started a new unit on the Middle Ages. Last week, we focused on northern Europe and the Vikings/Norsemen. We started by learning the location of the Scandinavian countries. We talked about the “barbarian” invasions of the Roman Empire and read that section in our history book. The spine for our...
Ages 2-6: Clocks - Telling Time / Math General Posts / Math--Addition / Math--Multiplication
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published February 16, 2015
This Thursday, Feb. 19th, is Chinese New Year. ED continues to work on multiplication for the first time and I wanted to make her some worksheets again this week to work on moving from skip counting to simple multiplication problems. There are 7 pages, 3 of them include addition with regrouping and simple subtraction problems. Her worksheets are dragon-themed to celebrate the Chinese New Year! I hope someone else can use...
Homeschool Den / Science / Science: Vertebrates - Invertebrates
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published February 15, 2015 · Last modified February 17, 2016
About the same time we studied the world biomes years ago, my son was *really* into reptiles. I made some cards for him back then and made them into pin-map pieces that he placed on our world map. There were reptiles from the rainforest, desert and tropical savanna. I also used the cards as Montessori 3-Part cards (where he matched the name with the photo). You’ll find those larger cards below....
History: Geography Activities / Homeschool Den
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published February 14, 2015 · Last modified February 16, 2016
If you are studying about different animal habitats or the word biomes, you may be interested in this free download. I made this world biomes pin map for the kids years ago. It includes a world biomes map and legend has pictures of the boreal and deciduous forests, rain forest, grasslands/savannas, chaparral, and tundra that the kids can stick onto the map. How to Make This: Print out all three pages on card...
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.
