Making Homeschooling Hands-On, Engaging, Meaningful & Memorable! Be inspired by all the possibilities!! Check out our unit studies, packets and printables!
Homeschool Den / Science: Earth Science Unit / Science: Natural Disasters Unit and Activities
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published January 23, 2015 · Last modified August 23, 2018
We have two hands-on volcano activities to share with you today; the gelatin activity was especially cool once we realized our mistake! Both of them help demonstrate how the release of pressure causes lava to flow. We had already spent a lot of time learning about plate tectonics. Earth’s volcanoes are generally found where Earth’s plates are expanding or converging. We looked closely at the parts of the volcano and...
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!...
Arts and Crafts / Science / Science: Earth Science Unit
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published January 20, 2015 · Last modified August 22, 2018
I am SO excited to start sharing some of our hands-on Earth Science activities again! We did three or four different volcano activities and several fun Earthquake activities that we’ll share with you over the next week or two. And, of course, the long-awaited Earth science packet is just about ready to share as well. This first volcano craft is an idea I first saw over at Our Worldwide Classroom. We...
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published January 17, 2015 · Last modified July 6, 2020
If you’re looking for the answers to your homeschool questions, the new tab at the top of the page, “Starting to Homeschool” is the place to start!! It has links to dozens and dozens of posts: How to find a homeschool curriculum? What about socialization? How do I know what to teach the kids? What does a homeschool day look like? How do I start homeschooling my preschooler? How many...
Critical Thinking Activities / Math General Posts
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published January 16, 2015
Today during math circles we had this mind bender: Cut this magic carpet into three pieces and sew it back together to make a 6×6 carpet. DD and LD got it WAAaaaayy before ED and I did. ED was sad that she hadn’t gotten it yet, so LD said Well, you are young and your mind is just developing. Mom’s mind is old and her mind is rotting! That had...
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...
This semester we started back in our German studies with these two story books. We sat down together to read through the stories… and stop along the way to go over vocabulary. The first book we read was Floppy Das Monster Ist Fast Auf Immer Verloren (German Edition) (The books in this post are affiliate links.) The kids did really well with both the story line and the vocabulary. The other book we are...
Critical Thinking Activities / Homeschool Den / Math General Posts
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published January 12, 2015 · Last modified January 2, 2020
A few days ago, I mentioned that we started back into homeschooling with Math Circles rather than jumping into our “normal” math curriculum. What are math circles? From what I understand, they started in Russia where they hosted math contests. Students competed to answer various word problems. The contest itself was designed to get students intrigued and excited about mathematics. There’s something similar here in the US called the Math Olympiad....
Homeschool: Our Homeschool (what our day is like, curriculum choices, etc.)
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published January 10, 2015
We started back into homeschool this week after a long break and it went really well! It helps that we started each day gathered together in front of the wood stove to read. BRRRrrrr… it’s been cold and snowy out this week! I think there’s little groaning or fuss about starting to homeschool each morning because it’s so cozy and nice in front of the fire! Once we were all there (some days...
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published January 8, 2015 · Last modified January 4, 2016
We’re just getting back into the swing of things after our fabulous holiday!! I made this quick grammar review sheet for ED this week. It reviews rules about using capital letters, commas and letter writing. Meanwhile you can click below for the Grammar Review Sheet-capital letter comma letter ED has only gone over the first few comma rules; you can find that worksheet here: Simple Comma Rules Worksheet (for K-1) which also...
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...
Homeschool Den / Math General Posts / Math--Geometry
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published January 6, 2015
Just a quick note for you this morning because I thought you might like this too. When I saw this, I just knew I’d have to share it with the kids! They have taken to memorizing π. (I think DD knows π to 31 digits and her best friend knows it to 50 digits (in two languages, she tells me!)! Um… I’m not sure why, but it’s impressive!). The illustration below makes π so...
Engineering - STEM Activities / Engineering Challenges / Science: Earth Science Unit
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published January 5, 2015 · Last modified March 30, 2015
In this post, I’m going to talk first about some engineering activities my kids did over the break… and then in the second part of this post I’m going to share an amazing free engineering resource for kids. So, first the activities! As many of you know, I found out that I would have to move our blog from our Parents.com location to this new website. That was an enormous...
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.
