Category: Homeschool Den

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Quick Valentine’s Day Craft

The girls did this very quick Valentine’s Day craft last week.  We’ve been doing this nearly every year since they were toddlers. 🙂 It adds such a pretty splash of color this time of year! You might be interested in these Valentine’s Day Resources:  Valentines – First Multiplication Page-Skip Counting-Addition-SubtractionPractice Valentine’s Day Addition Pages (free) Valentine’s Multiplication Worksheets and Game Boards Valentine’s Bump Game Doubling (Addition) Valentine’s Bump Game —...

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Valentine’s Day Math Worksheets: Multiplication, Skip Counting, Addition, Subtraction

I made these Valentine’s Day math worksheets for my daughter who is *just* learning about multiplication.  She knows how to skip count pretty well and has been asking to learn multiplication.  These sheets are pretty basic and cover multiplication by 2s, 5s and 10s. Several of the pages have clocks at the top (to help her see that she already knows 5×3, 5×6 and 5×9).   There are also a...

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Earth Science Packet: Layers of the Earth, Plate Tectonics, Earthquakes, Volcanoes, 4 Types of Mountains and More!

This 150+ page Earth Science Packet includes worksheets about the solar system, the layers of the Earth, plate tectonics, the ring of fire, earthquake activity and volcanoes. I also included instructions for more than a dozen hands-on activities we did with this unit. This includes activities about plate tectonics, using a compass, earthquakes, volcanoes,  instructions on how to make a shake table and more! My kids were in Grades 1, 4,...

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Earth Science Activities: Earthquakes, Plate Movement and Mountain Making

Last week I explained how we made an Earthquake Shake Table and shared a quick video on how we made ours.  We first tested it with marshmallow structures.  A couple days later, we made “brick” structures out of sugar cubes and peanut butter.  We put on the documentary, Deadliest Earthquakes, and set to work. We all built our structures and then brought out our shake table to test them out! The most exciting...

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The Kids Have Been Arguing Quite a Bit…

So at lunch time today when we were all calm and in good moods, I brought up the fact that they have been bickering quite a bit lately.  I asked them if they had any ideas on how to make it stop. “Well,” said LD, “maybe we should spend more time apart from each other.” “I  know,” said DD, “how about if LD and ED go to public school!!” “NOOooooo” the others...

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Earth Science – Awesome Gelatin Volcano and other Activities

We have two hands-on volcano activities to share with you today; the gelatin activity was especially cool once we realized our mistake!  Both of them help demonstrate how the release of pressure causes lava to flow. We had already spent a lot of time learning about plate tectonics.  Earth’s volcanoes are generally found where Earth’s plates are expanding or converging.  We looked closely at the parts of the volcano and...

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Writing Workshop MiniLesson #6 – Alliteration and More

The writing workshop is more than just sitting down together and putting pencil to paper. This is also our time to learn about the writing process, to talk about different writing genres, and to  learn about different literary techniques.  During our writing workshop, we take the time to explore writing as a craft. About a year ago, I shared a number of writing workshop mini-lessons.  I wrote a series of...

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German Books for Kids

This semester we started back in our German studies with these two story books. We sat down together to read through the stories… and stop along the way to go over vocabulary.  The first book we read was Floppy Das Monster Ist Fast Auf Immer Verloren (German Edition) (The books in this post are affiliate links.) The kids did really well with both the story line and the vocabulary. The other book we are...

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Critical Thinking Activities – Math Circles

A few days ago, I mentioned that we started back into homeschooling with Math Circles rather than jumping into our “normal” math curriculum. What are math circles? From what I understand, they started in Russia where they hosted math contests.  Students competed to answer various word problems. The contest itself was designed to get students intrigued and excited about mathematics. There’s something similar here in the US called the Math Olympiad....

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Grammar Review Sheet – Capital Letters, Commas, Letters

We’re just getting back into the swing of things after our fabulous holiday!! I made this quick grammar review sheet for ED this week. It reviews rules about using capital letters, commas and letter writing.    Meanwhile you can click below for the Grammar Review Sheet-capital letter comma letter ED has only gone over the first few comma rules; you can find that worksheet here: Simple Comma Rules Worksheet (for K-1) which also...

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Brilliant Way for Kids to Understand Pi

Just a quick note for you this morning because I thought you might like this too. When I saw this, I just knew I’d have to share it with the kids! They have taken to memorizing π. (I think DD knows π to 31 digits and her best friend knows it to 50 digits (in two languages, she tells me!)! Um… I’m not sure why, but it’s impressive!).  The illustration below makes π so...

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Teach Your Child to Read – Activities to Foster Early Reading Skills

How do you help your child build early literacy skills? Here are 12 fun activities to help build early reading skills! These are activities we did with CVC words and basic sight words to make the learning process fun and engaging!! The first step in learning to read is to make sure your child knows their letter sounds. We shared lots of ideas about that in our Preschool at Home...

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How to Start Homeschooling After the Holidays

The holidays are almost over… Two or three (or more!) weeks have gone by since you last “cracked the books”…  The “normal” homeschool routine is a thing of the past…  Are you feeling ready to start back into homeschooling? Here are some of the things I try to do before we jump back into our homeschool routine. 1) Make Sure You’ve Really Had a Break! If you have spent the...

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20+ Classic History Movies to Watch With Older Kids

While Hollywood movies aren’t necessarily “historically accurate,” they do make an impact that sparks people’s interest and encourages people to delve into a subject area in more detail.  Here are some classic movies you might consider watching with your family. Remember, to preview the film first to see if it is appropriate for your family.  When we have watched some of these classic movies together, there are some scenes I’ve chosen...