Making Homeschooling Hands-On, Engaging, Meaningful & Memorable! Be inspired by all the possibilities!! Check out our unit studies, packets and printables!
Homeschool Den / Language Arts: Writing / Must Read
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published February 17, 2014 · Last modified January 30, 2024
How do you help a child who throws his hands up and declares he can’t write, refuses to write, only writes “I suck at writing” or prose of that sort? Well, it has been a long hard journey for my son (10), but things have started to turn around this year and I wanted to share how we’ve made it over that hump… most of the time. *Have a space where...
Like so much of the east coast, we spent a lot of time today digging out from the huge snowfall. ED is the youngest and often the hardest worker! She was out there shoveling (and playing) for hours. Boomer said, “No way I’m going down those stairs.” So, we created a potty spot for her, shoveling a path into the back yard from the garage. It’s snowing again right now...
Engineering - STEM Activities / Homeschool Den / Science / Science Experiments
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published February 10, 2014 · Last modified April 29, 2017
There is an amazing engineering curriculum that is put out by the Museum of Science, Boston. It’s called Engineering is Elementary. My friend first told me about their hands-on curriculum units and we actually have two of their units lined up for the next month or two. Why study engineering? Their website explains it this way: Hands-on, project-based learning is the essence of engineering. As groups of students work together...
Freebies / Homeschool Den / Language Arts: Writing
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published February 5, 2014 · Last modified September 21, 2019
I was so excited to come across the Young Writer’s Survival Kit by Melissa Forney. It has been an amazing resource for our writing workshop. UPDATE: Sorry to say, the resource below (Young Writer’s Survival Kit) is no longer available. You might want to check out our Writing Resource Packet. It is currently free. At times when it’s writing time, I haven’t thought of a writing mini-lesson for the day....
History: Civil Rights Movement / Homeschool Den / Must Read
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published February 4, 2014 · Last modified March 3, 2016
This is a packet on the main events of the Civil Rights period that I made for the kids to add to their history notebook. I wanted them to have a visual way to remember many of the events we’ve read and studied about over the last four or five weeks. We sat together and went over the key events as we read many of the books in this unit....
History: Civil Rights Movement / Homeschool Den
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published February 3, 2014 · Last modified March 3, 2016
Every year since 1976, every U.S. president has designated February as black history month. We have just about finished up our unit on the Civil Rights Movement and I have a couple more posts to share with you. Last week, we learned about the challenges young blacks faced when they attended all-white schools in the late 1950s and early 1960s. We first learned about the Little Rock Nine. Then, the...
Ages 2-6: Preschool (Age 4) / Ages 2-6: Preschool and Toddler Activities / Ages 2-6: Preschool for ED - Fall 2011 (age 3 1/2) / Holiday: Valentine's Day / Homeschool Den
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published February 2, 2014 · Last modified February 8, 2019
There are so many wonderful free Valentine’s Day resources for preschoolers out there. I thought I’d highlight a few in case you’re planning to pull some Valentine’s activities out for the kids in the next couple of weeks: This Reading Mama: Matching letters and sounds, math grid game, maze and more Over the Big Moon: Prewriting Practice Sheets, Cutting Practice, Which one is different, Finish the Pattern Sheet, Size Sequencing Sheet, Valentine Strip Puzzle, 4-piece Puzzles,...
Holiday: Valentine's Day / Homeschool Den / Homeschool Encouragement / Homeschool: Random Thoughts / Homeschool: Useful Resources (websites books etc)
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published February 1, 2014 · Last modified April 13, 2016
It’s always time to fill the house with love, right? With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, it’s timely to think about what this means. Sometimes love isn’t just the feelings you have, it’s the actions you take. I wrote this post last year as I struggled with major (ear) problems that led to 6 ear surgeries in 8 months… You can read more at this post, I’m going deaf today. (I am...
Ear Surgery / Health / Homeschool Den
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published February 1, 2014 · Last modified April 30, 2016
I’m in the process of creating a more optimistic, upbeat post but couldn’t get started with that until I vented about my ear issues again. I’ll pour my heart out here and then move on to more positive things. Last week I wrote about my ear surgery 10 days ago and explained that the surgery was only partially successful. My doctor was able to drill out and remove the...
Ages 2-6: Clocks - Telling Time / Homeschool Den / Kindergarten Math / Math General Posts / Must Read
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published January 30, 2014 · Last modified December 19, 2016
When I shared the free skip-counting pages a little while back, I mentioned that ED has been working a lot on clocks. I thought I’d share some of the clock-type activities we use in our homeschool. I made ED a packet of time sheets from the Teacher’s Corner: Time Worksheet Generator. You can create worksheets that suit your child’s needs. You can create worksheets to the hour, half-hour, quarter hour,...
Homeschool Den / Language Arts: Writing / Must Read
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published January 27, 2014 · Last modified January 30, 2024
Last semester, the kids worked on their first mini-research paper. They hadn’t done a project like this before, so I took them step-by-step through the process of finding books and Internet resources, creating a bibliography, taking notes and writing a paper. They had a “due date” and I graded their paper and gave them feedback on what they could do better next time. I wanted them to have the experience...
Freebies / Holiday: Christmas Activities / Homeschool Den / Kindergarten Math / Math--Addition
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published January 21, 2014 · Last modified January 5, 2020
I made these free addition worksheets for my daughter for this next week. I thought I’d share them in case anyone else can find them of use. These pages are pretty simple addition and doubling. Free Winter-Themed Addition Pages You might also enjoy the Montessori-Style Winter Addition Pages You might want to check out our Addition and Subtraction Pet Pack which is in our K-2 Math BUNDLE (which includes 20...
Ear Surgery / Homeschool Den / Homeschool: Our Homeschool (what our day is like, curriculum choices, etc.) / Homeschool: Random Thoughts / Mom Stories
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published January 20, 2014 · Last modified April 30, 2016
The past three months have been very difficult. If you’re a regular reader, you know I had ear surgery in October. I have more complications than I can count on one hand. Healing was very slow and a couple of weeks after the surgery I came down with something called BPPV in two semi-circular canals (in my ear) which causes vertigo, the entire world to spin, balance issues and incredible...
Freebies / History: Civics, Government and Economics / History: Civil Rights Movement / Homeschool Den
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published January 10, 2014 · Last modified March 3, 2016
Yesterday I shared the Civil Rights books we’ll be using in our Civil Rights Movement unit. Before we go into a lot of depth about the events of the 1950s and 1960s, I wanted to make sure the kids really understood some of the history leading up to this period. I created a photo timeline of events to help my kids review (and/or understand) the events leading to the Civil...
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.
