Category: Homeschool Den

Vacation at the Outer Banks 4

Vacation at the Outer Banks

My sister’s family also homeschools, so we take advantage of the pre-summer season prices to spend a week together. We met up with my Dad & step-Mom, my sister, brother-in-law, nieces and nephew at the Outer Banks. The weather had called for temperatures in the low 70s last week, but once we arrived the forecast changed. We had several days between 85-88 degrees. Perfect for the beach!  I slathered the...

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Animals and Their Groups Sorting Cards (ages 5-8)

A couple of months ago, I did an animal unit with my youngest.  We went over the characteristics of living and non-living things. Then we talked about vertebrates and invertebrates and finally we went over the five vertebrate groups in quite some detail. I shared the free Montessori cards I made for that part of our unit: the Montessori Vertebrate-Invertebrate cards and the sheets I made on Animals and their Characteristics....

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Preschool at Home: Alphabet Activities for 2-4 year olds

Here are some alphabet activity ideas you can do with your little one: At first we played these activities just for letter identification, but as the kids learned their letters we would play these games and identify the sound/s they make. Above all, be enthusiastic and have FUN with the kids!! Jump on Letters:We did this activity with everything from contact paper in the kitchen to letters written in chalk on...

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Free Weather Packet

Today I’m going to share some free weather worksheets I made for the kids.  This is for our study of the weather: the uneven heating of the Earth and how that affects our weather, fronts, and more! Yesterday, I shared some of the science experiments we did about air. We learned that air has weight, hot air rises and more.  We are using a science textbook as the spine of...

Happy Mother’s Day! (It’s officially 100 years old this year!) 0

Happy Mother’s Day! (It’s officially 100 years old this year!)

This year Mother’s Day is officially one hundred years old in the U.S. On May 8, 1914  Congress passed a law to officially celebrate Mother’s day on the second Sunday in May. Facts About Moms (in the U.S.)  There are more than 85 million mothers of all ages in the United States. According to the Pew Research Institute, fewer Moms are married than fifty years ago   Of all women age...

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Pattern Block Templates (Ages 18mo-4 years)

When my kids were little I bought a set of Pattern Blocks. It’s been one of the most enduring resources we have. We still bring them out occasionally and also use them for math now and then. The kids have used templates like these: And they’ve also used the pattern blocks for free play: There are lots of places where you can find free pattern block templates: One of the...

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Our Homeschool Week (Grades 3 and 5)

The past couple of weeks have flown by. I wanted to write up a quick post to mention some of the things that are going well for us at the moment.  It’s hard to believe that we’ll be wrapping up another school year in four or five weeks! Here’s what we’ve been up to the past few weeks: Language Arts: In order to fulfill the requirements of our state, the...

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Free Montessori Style Addition Sheets (And Place Value Activities)

Earlier this year, ED decided she wanted a math workbook just like DD and LD’s books.  We had been playing a lot of games, but according to her, that wasn’t “real math” anymore!  I bought a Spectrum math workbook for her (grade 2). She worked her way through the basic addition problems. Before she goes on to tackle double digit addition and subtraction in that book, though, I wanted her...

Homeschool Purchases and Organization — Furniture, etc. 0

Homeschool Purchases and Organization — Furniture, etc.

Actually, there is no such thing as homeschool furniture or purchases since everybody’s home is unique and everyone has their own style!  But that being said, there are a few purchases I’ve made in the past six months that I really love and I wanted to share.  Book Display Shelves: We have all kinds of book displays, but I wanted one that looked “nice” and would display the writing books...

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All That Crazy Rain

Like much of the east coast, we had a huge amount of rain on Wednesday.  We had just finished our writing workshop, when ED looked out the window and saw that our tiny creek was teeming with water. The kids rushed to get their swim suits on, I got on my big rubber boots and we went down to check things out. The little trickle of our creek was impressive!...

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Free Confucius Notebook Pages

Have you heard of these sayings? A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Do not do to others what you do not want others to do to you. Respect yourself and others will respect you. Judge others by what you know of yourself. Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall. It does not matter how slowly you go...

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Grammar Practice Sheets: Plurals, Endings, Past Tense Verbs

I made a couple of sheets so my older kids can review how to add endings (such as -ed, -ly, -s, -es and so forth). We reviewed when to double the final consonant and some of the irregular verbs.  I also included the answers (but they are not shown in the picture below). There’s nothing fancy about these sheets, but they’re free to download if your kids need some review:...

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Chinese Brush Painting Lesson

Today was the type of day when everything pulled together beautifully!  I set up paper and paints on the kitchen table and had all our books assembled to talk about Chinese brush painting, read from our novel and read from our Chinese history book. The kids ate it all up! We started with a lovely picture book called Brush of the Gods.It was a legend from about 762AD about a...

Nature Scavenger Hunt Free Printable 0

Nature Scavenger Hunt Free Download

Are you looking for free Nature Scavenger Hunt printables? We have several fun options!  Every spring, as the weather gets nicer and nicer we spend more and more time outdoors. We’ve been doing this scavenger hunt for years. I know we’re not alone because this printable has gotten well over 50,000 downloads since I first made it years ago!! We found a lot of cool critters that very first year we did...