Category: Homeschool Den

The Blog-Life Balance – What You Read Doesn’t Come Close to the Whole Picture! 1

The Blog-Life Balance – What You Read Doesn’t Come Close to the Whole Picture!

Every now and then I feel compelled to point out that our blog shows just the smallest snippet of our life. Sometimes we have great things going on, sometimes we’re just doing run-of-the-mill stuff and sometimes we’re overloaded with social commitments and activities. Life has been pretty hectic and crazy the past couple of weeks, especially with Hubby out of town. I’ve/we’ve been going full speed between school, activities, and...

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The Hardest Lesson of All — Death and Dying

We tackled the greatest lessons of all this past week… life, living, love, dying and death. It was a difficult week for our family… the final days of a beloved family member, the kids’ Great Grandmother, Vovo. Yesterday, she passed away. She was 93 and had lived an incredibly full life. She was well educated (had numerous Master’s degrees), well loved and made an incredible difference in the lives of...

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Fall Themed Craft: Spaghetti Tree

  The last time we did spaghetti art, we simply colored strands different colors and made a free for all.  This time, we had a specific goal in mind… barren trees.  They turned out well! Cook spaghetti and cool with cold water. Mix glue and paint together. Dip the spaghetti into the glue-paint mixture and form into the desired shape We placed ours on wax paper, but you could also...

Spelling Sort: Long E Words 0

Spelling Sort: Long E Words

Today I’m sharing the Long E Spelling Sort I made for the kids over the weekend. I made two sets–one the Pokemon themed set here and a bird set for those not crazy about Pokemon. Last week the older kids went over the Long A spelling words (it was new for DD, but I had LD review them as well). This list includes not only words like made or sail but...

“Well-versed in Controversy” — A Homeschooling Article in the Washington Post Magazine 0

“Well-versed in Controversy” — A Homeschooling Article in the Washington Post Magazine

Over the weekend, an article was published in the Washington Post Magazine about homeschooling — and more specifically about the well-known author, Susan Wise Bauer. As many of you fellow homeschoolers probably already know, Susan Wise Bauer is the other of a number of books used by homeschoolers and schools alike including The Well Trained Mind,  the Story of the World history series, First Language Lessons, Writing with Ease and many more. The article...

Fall Themed Craft: Cinnamon Ornaments 0

Fall Themed Craft: Cinnamon Ornaments

If your kids are home for election day, this is a quick craft that smells great!! These ornaments are SO easy to make and smell wonderful! The last time we made these (3 or 4 years ago!), we made them for our Christmas tree, but with the smell of cinnamon and nutmeg I thought they’d be the perfect craft for the fall season! We made them into necklaces and also...

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Science Experiments: Red Cabbage Indicator (Fun for Ages 4 and Up!)

  We did a lot of Montessori science when the older kids were little, so this is an experiment we did years ago. Now the older kids are studying chemistry and ED is the perfect age (4) to enjoy the action of this experiment. Using red cabbage juice as the indicator, you add various household ingredients and compare it to an acid-base chart to see where that particular item falls...

8-Year Old Dresses ‘In Character’ Every Day 0

8-Year Old Dresses ‘In Character’ Every Day

I loved the creativity of this 3rd grade girl who dresses as a new character every day. She gets her inspiration from books, people she learns about, and friends. Each day she dresses as someone new from Jane Goodall and Harriet Tubman to Emily Dickinson, Georgia O’Keefe and Hermione Granger. You can see photos and read more at CNN Living. We’ve been reading short biographical sketches of famous people from...

Why I Love Fall 1

Why I Love Fall

The Beautiful Colors Hot Apple Cider Pumpkin Muffins! Here’s a post where I share our pumpkin muffin recipe. We make these all year long, but they are especially wonderful in the fall! Fall Decorations Roasted Pumpkin Seeds! We make ours by rinsing the seeds well and removing any extra pulp. Then we add 2 teaspoons of olive oil per 1 1/2 cups or so of pumpkin seed. We spread it...

Sandy-Crisis Map — Finding Information about Storm Affected Areas (power, gas stations, food, images etc.) 0

Sandy-Crisis Map — Finding Information about Storm Affected Areas (power, gas stations, food, images etc.)

Sandy-Crisis Map After a nerve wracking wait, we got in touch with my step-Mom’s relative who got in touch with my folk’s pet-sitter who drove over to their house to find that my Dad and step-Mom are fine. They still don’t have power (they’re in the huge stretch of New Jersey and New York that is still out of power). If you want to check on your loved ones and...

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Pumpkin Pie Scented Playdough

The scent of this playdough brought even my 9-year-old running! So much for the schoolwork that was supposed to get done while ED was happily playing! I had to change course and do some read-alouds while the kids were occupied. Here’s how we made it: 1 cup flour 1/3 cup salt 1 1/2  tsp cloves 1 1/2 or 2 tsp cinnamon 1/2 tsp nutmeg 1 Tablespoon Cream of Tartar 1 Tablespoon...

Grammar Worksheets: Comma Rules 2

Grammar Worksheets: Comma Rules

After a couple weeks working on spelling, we’re now back to working on grammar for a week or two. We use the Write Source Skills Books as our spine. (They’re about $7.95 each.) This week LD needed a bit of review on all the rules for commas and I made up a number of review sheets for him. After printing out the pages, you need to cut the rules and sentences...

Power Finally Restored to Us… But Not For My Folks in NJ; How You Can Help Storm Victims 2

Power Finally Restored to Us… But Not For My Folks in NJ; How You Can Help Storm Victims

We had two days without power (heat, water or septic), but with all the preparations we had made (four huge storage tubs filled with water, two huge bags of ice in an ice chest to keep milk and stuff cold), we were able to treat it more like a camping trip and adventure for the kids. We pulled out the camping stove for coffee and heating up our meals (out...