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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...
Holiday: Christmas Activities / Homeschool Den
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published December 21, 2013
Dear Santa, This year my 8-year-old daughter asked if I was going to write to Santa. She’s been writing to you all year and thinking very carefully about what she wants for Christmas. It’s been a while now since I’ve taken the time to write to you, but I think I’ll do that this year! So Santa, I’d like to start off with the basics. To be honest, I’m not...
History: India Unit / Homeschool Den / Must Read
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published December 20, 2013 · Last modified March 12, 2016
This week we finished up our studies of India with a close look at Gandhi, his life and contributions. We read a number of children’s books and biographies and watched highlights from the well-known movie, Gandhi. There are a few parts of the movie that (in my opinion) are too rough for younger kids, but some of the scenes (the Indian country-side, the marches) were amazing! The movie is SO...
Elem-Children's Music 1 (6 yr old) / Holiday: Christmas Activities / Homeschool Den / Music
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published December 19, 2013 · Last modified December 8, 2015
My kids have been asking for more Christmas music to play on the piano. I went to two of my favorite music-related websites and saw both of them have free Christmas music for beginning piano players. Some of it is perfect for DD who is now on her second year of piano and some of it is great for ED who just started learning piano this fall. The first website is...
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...
Arts and Crafts / Holiday: Christmas Activities / Homeschool Den
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published December 7, 2013
Every year there are a few Christmas decorations that I absolutely LOVE bringing out! I wanted to share a few of our family favorites! My personal favorites are the ones that include pictures of the kids. One year when the kids were not-quite-2, 4 and 6, I made a holiday picture banner. I took pictures of the kids holding all the letters in Merry Christmas. Then I laminated them and...
Freebies / Homeschool Den / Language Arts - Grammar Worksheets
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published December 5, 2013 · Last modified May 16, 2023
Last week I mentioned that we’ve been doing some grammar review again. We went over 11 comma rules. Then each day they’ve been doing five or six sentences — adding in the comma where needed and identifying the comma rule that applies. My kids love science, so the comma worksheet has a lot to do with science this time. (There are sentences about the plague, polio, the Venus fly trap,...
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...
Freebies / Homeschool Den / Math General Posts / Must Read
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published November 27, 2013 · Last modified July 7, 2020
Yesterday, I mentioned that we’ve added a new portion to our math day. For much of the fall, the kids were simply doing math problems from their math book and they were complaining that math was B*O*R*I*N*G. What? Oh NO!! It was true, though, with everything else going on they were doing straight-forward stuff; you know fraction problems like this… or long division… or a good meaty problem like 5789...
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...
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published November 24, 2013 · Last modified April 10, 2016
Growing up, my family didn’t buy cookies at the grocery store, we always baked them at home. I love to bake and have been making cookies since I was little. By the time my sister went off to college (and I was in 7th grade), I took over the weekly task of baking cookies for my family’s lunches. We have some pretty great family recipes for shortbread cookies, peanut...
Critical Thinking Activities / Family Meeting / Games for Thinking and Learning / Homeschool Den
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published November 23, 2013 · Last modified April 10, 2016
It has been WAAaay too long since we had a family games night. For a while we did really well holding a family meeting once a month or so (see this post-Holding a Family Meeting) and this post (Our Monthly Family Meeting). Last weekend, though, everyone was home (no sleep-overs, no sporting events!) and so we gathered together to play a bunch of games! Fun! This was the first time we...
Homeschool Den / Science / Science: Simple Machines Unit
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published November 21, 2013 · Last modified April 6, 2019
The last day of our Simple Machines unit was probably our favorite. We spent hours and hours making and toying with different ways of making pulleys and wheel-n-axles! We started (as always) by reading a couple of books. We did an activity to show investigate which way of looping the rope made it easier/harder to pull the broom-handles together: The kids really enjoyed Pull, Lift, and Lower: A Book About...
Freebies / Holiday: Thanksgiving / Homeschool Den / Kindergarten Math / Math General Posts / Math--Multiplication / Math: Preschool Math
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published November 20, 2013 · Last modified November 15, 2018
Last week my daughter did several skip counting mazes and she asked for more. I whipped a few new sheets together for her… the turkey has to find his lost hat (and not wind up as dinner!). You can move in any direction including diagonally. If you are interested you can download them and use them with your kids as well! Enjoy! Thanksgiving Skip Counting Practice 2s 3s 5s If...
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.
