Making Homeschooling Hands-On, Engaging, Meaningful & Memorable! Be inspired by all the possibilities!! Check out our unit studies, packets and printables!
There have been quite a number of homeschool-related articles in the past couple of weeks: A German homeschooling family that has been living in Tennessee for several years has been seeking asylum in the U.S. because homeschooling is not allowed in their native country of Germany. They withdrew their children from German schools because the school teachings on sex, violence and other issues conflicted with their Christian faith. They face...
Yesterday, I mentioned a couple of science books that I bought out to see if they’d be a good fit for our homeschool. I purchased the Physical Science Daybook first. I thumbed through the articles and read some with the kids. I was really impressed by them. They have articles on various topics that are truly interesting and engaging. Yesterday, I shared about the Frog Antifreeze — frogs who freeze...
Homeschool Den / Homeschool: Organizing and Cleaning / Nature / Outdoor Fun
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published July 23, 2013
I remember reading once that you are never supposed to write about not blogging. “Boring!” someone said. I still feel the need to apologize or explain the infrequent posts, though! We’re still in summer mode and while I think I’ve more-or-less hammered out our fall semester and have been busy browsing and purchasing books, scoping out cool science experiments and activities, making some worksheets and games for our units, I’ve felt...
Homeschool Den / Homeschool: Our Homeschool (what our day is like, curriculum choices, etc.) / Homeschool: Random Thoughts / Must Read
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published July 18, 2013
We’re in the home stretch of summer vacation. It’s very hot (very, very hot!) so we’re spending a lot of time indoors. At times the kids play like angels. Their creativity is inspiring. Their music and shows are lovely. Other times? They argue and are at each other’s throats. Nasty words come out. Tears run like Niagara Falls. What do we do to help alleviate that sibling bickering? I notice...
Ages 2-6: Preschool (Age 4) / Ages 2-6: Preschool and Toddler Activities / Freebies / Homeschool Den / Kindergarten / Language Arts: Reading / Must Read
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published July 16, 2013 · Last modified March 7, 2016
Earlier this summer ED switched back to the Bob Book series for a little while and I made some worksheets to go along with them. She really liked working on these. I hope someone else finds them useful. As always, they are free to download. If you’d like to share or pin, go ahead just link back to my original post. Thanks! If you use them I’d love to hear...
Health / Homeschool Den / Nature / Outdoor Fun
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published July 13, 2013 · Last modified March 16, 2016
Here in the U.S. we hear about the importance of staying out of the sun during peak hours and using sun screen. Over in Australia, there was a HUGE campaign to get people to protect themselves from the sun. “Slip, Slop, Slap” was an advertisement we saw ALL the time on TV. Slip on a shirt, slop on the sunscreen, slap on a hat. The kids in our small town...
Elem-Children's Music 1 (6 yr old) / Music / Must Read
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published July 12, 2013
I’ve been working on gathering our music resources for this next fall. I want to introduce the kids to a bit of classical music. I’d like them to have a little more familiarity with some of the famous composers. I found this CD, The Idiots Guide to Classical Music, used at our local used bookstore for 99cents. It has small snippets from many, many famous pieces. It has 99 tracks!...
Active Math Games / Kindergarten / Math General Posts / Math--Addition
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published July 11, 2013
Practically everyone has a Candy Land board around, right? I came across an adorable addition game to go along with the classic board game Candy Land. If you’re looking to review some basic math facts with your child this summer you might want to print out the cards offered by Mel at Teachers Pay Teachers. It’s free at the moment; I don’t know if it normally costs something to download...
Ages 2-6: Preschool (Age 4) / Freebies / Homeschool: Our Homeschool (what our day is like, curriculum choices, etc.) / Language Arts: Reading / Must Read / Science
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published July 10, 2013 · Last modified June 23, 2015
I am trying to do some general organizing this summer for the next school year. I’ve been trying to figure out what science units we’ll do this next year and also wanted to be sure that I’m covering some fun/basic information with the kids. My oldest loved science from very early on and we added lots and lots of books to read aloud when he was in preschool-kindergarten. At the...
This post has some free German worksheets that you can use with beginners. These are some of the printable materials I used with my kids when they were first learning German. In this post, I’ve shared some of the resources we used as we reviewed basic words in German: numbers, colors, words around the house, words in a school room, animals, etc. Be sure to scroll all the way to...
Homeschool: Organizing and Cleaning / Homeschool: Planning and Preparation / Homeschool: Random Thoughts
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published July 6, 2013 · Last modified July 10, 2016
I love our breaks! I really, really need time to re-group and get refreshed for another semester. This is probably as important a part of our homeschooling life as when we are going full-tilt with science experiments and history projects! Right now I’m spending a lot of time taking care of myself (reading!!), tackling the house (getting up to my elbows re-organizing and cleaning) and working on the yard (weeding...
Nature / Outdoor Fun / Recipes / Science: Garden Science
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published July 5, 2013
It was dreadfully hot, but after dropping LD off at his day camp the girls and I headed off to a u-pick farm. In just an hour and a half we picked 4 huge containers of blueberries!! I love that this farm doesn’t spray their berries. What did we do with 20 pounds of blueberries? Well, we made 9 jars (3 batches) of blueberry jam… It’s easy to do you just...
My older two kids went to parkour camp. It was a day camp — and they absolutely LOVED it! We heard about parkour because their cousin out in California has been doing it for some time. My son described it this morning as “doing amazing things without dying.” Imagine climbing and jumping over obstacles, climbing up metal bars, running up the wall and doing flips, swinging from ring to ring,...
Arts and Crafts / Homeschool Den
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published June 30, 2013 · Last modified April 12, 2015
A wonderful way to recycle, inspire and create is to save your clean trash. Set that out along with feathers, googly eyes, glue, pipe cleaners and other assorted things to see what you child can come up with. Egg cartons were a huge hit with the girls last week. While I decorated a tissue box… the girls set to work on their own cute puppets (no input from me)! Our...
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.
