Making Homeschooling Hands-On, Engaging, Meaningful & Memorable! Be inspired by all the possibilities!! Check out our unit studies, packets and printables!
Homeschool Encouragement / Homeschool: Our Homeschool (what our day is like, curriculum choices, etc.) / Homeschool: Planning and Preparation / Homeschool: Random Thoughts
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published January 18, 2014 · Last modified April 30, 2016
Someone recently asked me how to get started homeschooling. She was interested in creating some unit studies for her kids and wanted to know where to start. Since I tend to create our history and science units myself, I thought I’d try to share how I pull our units together. I’ve written a lot of related posts about homeschooling things like planning, preparation, assessing our long term and short term...
Freebies / Homeschool Den / Homeschool: Planning and Preparation / Must Read / Science
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published January 6, 2014 · Last modified February 23, 2016
This post is now located here: Homeschool Science Unit Checklist for Elementary and Middle School
Homeschool Den / Homeschool: Our Homeschool (what our day is like, curriculum choices, etc.) / Homeschool: Planning and Preparation / Must Read
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published January 2, 2014
Over the holidays I spent a lot of time away from the computer (blogging, that is), but I did pull together plans for the new semester. Here’s what’s on the agenda: Science: We’ll be starting an earth science unit on weather, wind and water. We’ll be starting with an overview of the Earth’s 4 systems and then will learn about the atmosphere before continuing on to wind, weather, etc. daily...
Homeschool: Random Thoughts / Must Read
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published December 31, 2013 · Last modified July 10, 2016
You know a book is really great when you can’t read it without paper and pencil in hand to jot down all those flashes of inspiration! This break I’ve read several books for teachers that have really resonated with me. For those of you still on break, I thought I would mention them. Even if you’re not on break, they are inspiring and well worth squeezing in time to read...
Holiday: New Years / Homeschool Den / Homeschool: Random Thoughts
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published December 29, 2013 · Last modified December 14, 2016
The year is quickly coming to a close. I absolutely love the year end wrap-ups that come on TV… remembering and reflecting on the good, the amazing, the bad, the sad… And it’s worth thinking about our family’s own year in that same way. Here are some questions to consider about the year. At the end of the post I’ll share a year-end wrap-up of my own. (It’ll be a...
History: India Unit / Homeschool Den / Homeschool: Our Homeschool (what our day is like, curriculum choices, etc.) / Math General Posts / Must Read
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published December 12, 2013 · Last modified March 12, 2016
Tis the season to be flexible! Some days we get quite a bit done, other days… not so much. I try to keep myself calm about that. Yesterday, for example, all our friends had a snow day. Often time we do school anyway, but the appeal of sledding and playing outside with friends won over! Today, we were back to the normal homeschool schedule. Here are some of the things...
I hope everyone had a wonderful, safe Thanksgiving holiday. Life seemed to charge forward at break-neck speed and suddenly it was Thursday — Thanksgiving. We hadn’t even bought a turkey!! Since we didn’t have any extended family coming over (and the turkey was frozen solid!!!), we decided to have shrimp and veggies and a pumpkin pie on Thursday. Then we made the full spread on Friday (turkey, sweet potatoes, homemade...
Homeschool Den / Homeschool Encouragement / Homeschool: Our Homeschool (what our day is like, curriculum choices, etc.) / Homeschool: Planning and Preparation
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published November 26, 2013 · Last modified July 27, 2018
I thought I would put a post together that helps give a flavor of what our daily homeschooling routine looks like. So many of my posts are compilations of our activities, but they don’t actually show what happens day-to-day. It’s about time to do that again (and I enjoy reading these posts later as the kids get older!) We have finally gotten back to a relatively normal schedule. (If you...
Homeschool: Interviews with other Homeschoolers
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published November 8, 2013 · Last modified April 10, 2016
Perspectives from a working (part-time outside the home) homeschooling mom. Since Liesl is still under the weather, here is a guest post from a friend (Disclaimer: I am in no way as amazing a homeschooler as Liesl.) I have been homeschooling my kids since they were 4 and 2, they are now 9 and 11. I have also always worked part time outside the home and I love my profession. ...
Homeschool: Interviews with other Homeschoolers
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published November 1, 2013 · Last modified April 16, 2015
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...
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...
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...
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...
Homeschool: Our Homeschool (what our day is like, curriculum choices, etc.) / Homeschool: Random Thoughts
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published October 3, 2013
Sometimes we need an infusion of sunshine and happiness into our homeschool. There are times when the kids nitpick at each other, poke, needle and whine… we all (including me!) need to step back and ask ourselves if we are being as kind, thoughtful and caring as we can be! One day for our writing workshop, we read the book, Have You Filled a Bucket Today? A Guide to Daily...
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.
