Making Homeschooling Hands-On, Engaging, Meaningful & Memorable! Be inspired by all the possibilities!! Check out our unit studies, packets and printables!
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published October 26, 2013 · Last modified October 6, 2018
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...
Freebies / Kindergarten Math / Math General Posts / Math--Addition / Math--Multiplication
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published October 25, 2013 · Last modified March 29, 2016
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...
Ear Surgery / Homeschool Den / Homeschool: Our Homeschool (what our day is like, curriculum choices, etc.) / Homeschool: Random Thoughts
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published October 24, 2013 · Last modified March 29, 2016
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...
Science / Science: Digestive System / Science: Human Body Unit
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published October 23, 2013 · Last modified August 21, 2022
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...
Holiday: Halloween / Homeschool Den / Kindergarten / Kindergarten Math / Math General Posts / Math--Addition
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published October 21, 2013 · Last modified March 29, 2016
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. ...
Ages 2-6: Preschool (Age 4) / Freebies / Kindergarten / Montessori (general info) / Science
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published October 18, 2013 · Last modified December 23, 2016
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...
Must Read / Science: Human Body Unit
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published October 17, 2013 · Last modified February 21, 2022
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,...
Science / Science: Earth Science Unit
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published October 15, 2013 · Last modified July 19, 2018
Are you looking for hands-on Earth Science activities? This is a collection of some our favorite activities from our unit. Layers of the Earth Activities: 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 of...
Freebies / Language Arts - Grammar Worksheets
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published October 14, 2013 · Last modified May 12, 2016
This post has a collection of free grammar worksheets I’ve made for the kids over the past couple of years. You’ll find practice sheets on the major comma rules, apostrophes, underlining and more: This first set, covers the basic comma rules. We read over the rules together, then my son had to figure out which rule applied to each sentence and had to add in the appropriate comma/s. By the...
Science / Science: Rocks and Minerals
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published October 13, 2013 · Last modified April 23, 2021
Are you studying Rocks and Minerals?! Be sure to check out this post again which covers how rocks have been used, famous rock landmarks, how we use minerals in our environment, mining, recycling and the months and birthstones. Be sure to check out the links to our hands-on activities about the three types of rocks: sedimentary, igneous and metamorphic which you’ll find below. This week, I’m out of commission. I’m...
Homeschool Den / Homeschool: Our Homeschool (what our day is like, curriculum choices, etc.) / Homeschool: Random Thoughts
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published October 11, 2013
I love homeschooling — and I love writing about what we’re doing, but life is taking over for a little while. We have family coming from all over the US (and from Brazil) for my husband’s great uncle’s birthday party. He’s turning 90 and we are hosting several families (they started arriving earlier this week). Then tomorrow we will have 50 or 60 people over to our house. It’s been...
Active Math Games / Freebies / Homeschool Den / Math General Posts / Math--Multiplication
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published October 8, 2013 · Last modified April 2, 2017
DD has learned most of her multiplication facts, but she still needs lots of extra practice because it takes her a while to come up with the answer sometimes. I’m trying to find some fun ways to keep her practicing them and making sure she has them memorized and can recite the answer quickly. So here’s a post covering some of the fun ways we’re reviewing those facts… everything from...
Freebies / History: India Unit / History: World Religions / Homeschool Den
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published October 7, 2013 · Last modified March 3, 2016
Last week I shared the Free India Learning Packet. We’ve covered some basic facts and geography about India from that set and read about Ancient India in several of the books we’re using (Story of the World, Kingfisher Encyclopedia, etc.). Now that we covered some of the background about the ancient Indus Valley region, it was time to delve into some background about Hinduism. For the next couple of weeks,...
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published October 6, 2013 · Last modified February 25, 2020
I learned a new word with this unit: A zoonosis is any disease or infection that is naturally transmissible from vertebrate animals to humans. Zoonoses would be the plural! We had such a good experience with the CDC Science Ambassador unit on the West Nile Virus that we decided to try one more unit: Healthy Pets, Healthy People (Note: Look on the second set of tabs for “Zoonotic Disease”). Besides...
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.
