Author: Liesl - Homeschool Den

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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...

What to Do with That Candy? Science Experiments, Donations… 0

What to Do with That Candy? Science Experiments, Donations…

If you are wondering what to do with all that Halloween candy, you can always do some science! This is an experiment I did with my kids a while back with Skittles in water. I think the results are fascinating: Do you want to do other fun experiments with candy? Be sure to visit this great website, Candy Experiments written by Loralee, a mom of three. She recently wrote a post Candy Experiment Cards...

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Guest Post by My Homeschooling Sister: Intensity in Learning

This is a post by my amazing sister, Cynthia. She and her husband homeschool their three kids. My sister works full time and my brother-in-law works part time for the National Guard. They live on a farm in Tennessee and raise chickens and a few ducks.  Here’s a view looking out on their lake from a trip last winter: I’ve written about my sister’s family adventures from time to time...

Find Activities for your Tots or Preschoolers, Search for Different Unit Studies: Categories and Archives Features 0

Find Activities for your Tots or Preschoolers, Search for Different Unit Studies: Categories and Archives Features

We have a wonderful tech team here at Parents. You might have noticed that the categories feature of my blog is now back! Hooray! Ever since I started this blog I have been categorizing things into different units.  If you’re doing a study of Ancient Egypt or natural disasters, the human body or the ocean, or just want to look through the dozens and dozens of posts I did when...

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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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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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Halloween Party Games!

Each year, I organize a huge Halloween Party in our community. We have lots and lots of Halloween Party Games for the kids. The kids all have lots of fun!! I wanted to share some of the games that we play at our party. I made a document of all these games and shared them as a free download. You’ll find that at the end. We made a lot of...

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Dragon Themed Multiplication, Division and Addition Worksheet Packs

Before my surgery I had made some dragon themed math pages for the kids to work on while I was out last week. I drew the red and blue dragons myself. For some reason the kids are VERY into dragons and hippogriffs at the moment!  My drawings turned out reasonably cute (I’ll paste them in below to show you), but for some reason when I printed them, the pictures look...

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A Rough Week–When None of the Trivial Stuff Matters …and Only the Trivial Stuff Matters

This past week was really rough.  Last Wednesday, I had some ear surgery that was to reconstruct my ear canal and the inner bones in my ear.  The surgery was supposed to be relatively straight-forward, but wound up being much more challenging for the doctor (the surgery took a lot longer) and for me (I came out of the surgery very ill and in pain).  There was more damage and...

igestive-System-Worksheets 8

Human Body Activities – Digestive System

We had an amazing time studying the Digestive System.  We did a whole range of hands-on activities from making our own epiglottis  to seeing how the digestive tract works (how nutrients pass through). We made “fake”vomit, measured out the length of the digestive system and more! I also made notebook for the kids as we went through this unit. Our Digestive System Packet is now 150+ pages. Our Digestive System...

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Monster-Themed Addition Packet

Can you believe how soon Halloween will be here?  I’ve been trying to come up with some fun, interactive math activities for ED.  I loved the idea I saw out on Pinterest back in the summer where someone used googly eyes as manipulatives for addition practice. I drew our own little monster and made ED a packet with some flashcards and addition pages. She is learning very simple addition.  ...

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Various Free Montessori 3-Part Cards

This post includes links to some of the Montessori 3-part cards I’ve made over the years. Most of them are free! Montessori Sorting Activity: Living Nonliving Cards  Montessori-Style Animal Cards: Sorting Vertebrates-Invertebrates and Animals of the 5 Kingdoms U.S. Landmarks and Symbols – 3 part cards FREE — We placed these cards on a huge US map we have as we learned where these famous landmarks are locate. Montessori 3-Part...

Circulatory System Activity 0

Human Body System – Heart and Circulatory System Activities

I created a hands-on activity for the kids for learning about the circulatory system and the exchange of oxygen. Below you’ll find out more about our circulatory system activities: Our study of the heart and circulatory system started with a listen to our own heartbeats. We measured our heart rates when resting and after walking, running and skipping. Then using a graph put out by Texas heart institute (4th grade curriculum,...