Making Homeschooling Hands-On, Engaging, Meaningful & Memorable! Be inspired by all the possibilities!! Check out our unit studies, packets and printables!
Freebies / Math General Posts / Math--Multiplication
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published January 31, 2012
DD is just now learning to skip count by 3s. I made a unicorn and dragon themed game to help her practice. The game is pretty straight forward. Each player takes a turn drawing cards from the file until they get a dragon (STOP!) card. The player then sorts her cards and places them in skip counting order while the other player is drawing cards. The object is to be...
Freebies / Language Arts - Grammar Worksheets / Language Arts: Spelling
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published January 18, 2012 · Last modified March 20, 2015
Instead of jumping straight back into All About Spelling, I had the kids work on words with silent letters last week. You can find this word sort in the language materials area at Montessori for Everyone. I made a couple of work sheets for DD and LD to do with these. You can download them here if you are interested. You can see the first two pages below. Words with Silent...
Ages 2-6: Preschool (Age 4) / Ages 2-6: Preschool for ED - Fall 2011 (age 3 1/2) / Freebies / Montessori (general info) / Must Read
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published January 17, 2012
ED is ready to tackle the teen numbers. She often skips some of the numbers after 13. I am using a homemade version of the Montessori seguin board (download the packet I made here). It’s a board with lots of 10s in a row. The child then places a digit over the zero to make 11, 12, 13, etc. 1) First ED counted the number of animals. 2) Then she...
Freebies / Math General Posts / Math--Addition
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published December 13, 2011
Find the missing addend activity: Do you ever get attitude when you do certain subjects with your kids?? For some reason, LD has been reluctant to do math from one of his books. Playing games has turned that attitude around (for the time being) and he’s really done some great math work in the past couple of weeks. (We start with games like our beloved Speed! Multiplication Game, the division...
Since LD and I have been playing his division games daily, DD wanted her own board as well. I made one up for her last night so she can work on her sums to 16, 17, 18 and 19. (ie. 8+8, 9+10 and so forth). If you are interested the addition games and cards are found here.
Freebies / Math General Posts / Math--Division
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published December 5, 2011
LD was asking for more math games, so I whipped up two quick division games. The first game is the same Bump game I’ve mentioned before, this time using division problems. You can print out your own Bump Division Game here. *Each player takes a turn taking a division card and solving the answer. *The player places a token on the correct number on the gameboard. *We use pennies and...
Ages 2-6: Preschool and Toddler Activities / Ages 2-6: Preschool for ED - Fall 2011 (age 3 1/2) / Freebies / Science: Biomes; Animal Habitats
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published November 29, 2011 · Last modified November 26, 2015
Forest Habitat Animal Sort – Vertebrates-Invertebrates ED’s next habitat study is on the forest. I made a set of cards for the kids to sort through. We’ll be sorting them by vertebrates-invertebrates and also into the five animal kingdoms: ( fish), amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals. Oh and by the way, I didn’t include any fish in this sort–I did include a photo of crayfish that LD found in the...
LD has gone over a lot of the different long-A sound word groups for spelling. I made this word sort to help cement in some of those families especially the trickier ones such as eigh — weigh, eight, neighbor, sleigh aigh — straight ea — steak, break You can download a copy here if you are interested.
To go along with the build-a-sentence pack I made, I put together some free writing prompts. I’ll share it here in case some of you find it helpful for your emergent writers. It is 18 pages.Click here for the Free-Writing Prompts Pack
Freebies / Language Arts: Writing
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published November 7, 2011 · Last modified March 7, 2016
Over the weekend, I made a set of Build_A_Sentence-Creative-Writing-Pack for my first-grader. Build_A_Sentence Creative Writing Activity Here are my plans for them: The first couple of pages are filled with ideas. She’ll go through and create sentences (silly or not) to write in her journal. Next we’ll work together to brainstorm ideas for some of the other themed sheets. I made about twenty different themed sheets with topics such as friendship, aliens,...
Long a Words — Spelling Practice SentencesWe have gone over the long a words such as a (able, acorn) ai (sail, maid) a–e (cake, mate) ay (day) eigh (weigh, neighbor)ea (steak, break) ey (they) aigh (straight). This sheet uses these long a words in a sentence. They should be able to figure out the word by context, but if not you can tell them the word to write. Click herefor...
Freebies / Homeschool Den / Science: Biomes; Animal Habitats
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published September 22, 2011 · Last modified January 11, 2015
We have been working steadily on our USA landmarks and symbols unit study. This is a unit that doesn’t lend itself as well to pictures since I have pulled it together using history resources I have on hand. The kids each have a notebook and we’ve been adding to it steadily. Funny enough, LD has said he LOVES history and has been really into this unit. That amazes me a...
Freebies / Math General Posts / Math--Addition / Math--Multiplication
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published September 6, 2011
I made this simple math game for DD. This goes along with some of the math skills she’s learning with her new math curriculum. It’s a game of practicing doubling the numbers 4 through 9 (4+4, 5+5, etc.). Each player takes a turn rolling the die. He/She doubles the number on the die and then places a token or marker on that number on the gameboard. If another player has...
Freebies / Homeschool: Our Homeschool (what our day is like, curriculum choices, etc.) / Homeschool: Planning and Preparation / Science: Ocean Unit
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published August 30, 2011 · Last modified November 19, 2020
Sorry about the endless postings about our ocean unit… just a couple more and that’s that! Blogs are funny because they sure don’t show the whole picture. From looking at our blog our days are consumed by oceans!! Heh heh! Well, that’s not at all accurate. I read and read, planned and planned and finally the older kids started back to school last week. As you’ve seen, ED has been...
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.
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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.
