Category: Homeschool Den

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Telling Time Practice Sheets

The kids are reviewing time in math at the moment.  Going with the same kitty theme (see the preschool math sheets I made Counting Kitties from Monday’s post), I made clocks cards for ED. If you’re interested in these two pages, you’ll need to click on both links below: Kitty-Clock Analog Clock Kitty-Clock-Digital She is using them both for matching and to play a board game.   This is the...

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Science Experiments: Water Molecule Attraction

Matter is made of tiny particles that are attracted to one another. We did a series of experiments activities from Middle School Chemistry (the free, downloadable chemistry course) that show that water molecules are, indeed attracted to one another. We first used a medicine dropper to see how much water we could push out of the syringe. We also examined the pictures of the droplets we managed to photograph in...

Why You Shouldn’t Reward Kids for Learning 7

Why You Shouldn’t Reward Kids for Learning

Plato: Knowledge that is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind. This past summer we chose not to participate in our library’s reading program. At one point, we were chatting with a librarian and she asked if the kids were doing the library’s summer reading program. She was shocked when I told her we weren’t participating this year. “May I ask why?” she wanted to know. I had a...

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Chemistry: Molecule Movement Experiment and Chemistry Review Worksheet

We’ve been covering the states of matter, atoms and molecules in chemistry. I wanted review some of the information we’ve covered and made some basic worksheets for the kids. First, we went over the three states of matter and looked closely again at the parts of an atom. Molecule Movement Experiment: Then we did a simple experiment with water to show that water molecules can move at different rates. We...

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Games for Thinking and Learning: Lab Mice

This is a series about the logic and critical thinking games we play in our homeschool.  We have a table in our homeschool room and I rotate in new games a couple of times a week. These are all games we’ve acquired for schooling (I haven’t received them to review).  Back in September I explained… Why games? They’re fun. They can be challenging and helps kids (and adults!) apply creative...

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Grammar Practice Sheets: Apostrophes, Quotation Marks and Underlining (and others)

We tend to switch back and forth between our spelling program and our grammar work.  This past week we worked on grammar and I made a few more sheets that paralleled the topics that were covered in our Write Source Skills Book (here’s a link to Grade 2 and Grade 4).  If you’re interested you can download the worksheets I made for the kids. They cover the use of apostrophes, quotation...

Last Week was Hard!! Homeschool Realities… 1

Last Week was Hard!! Homeschool Realities…

Sometimes homeschooling is wonderful packed with endless projects and terrific successes. I like blogging about all that. But sometimes life just isn’t like that. This past week was really challenging. We were just coming back from a trip. Who doesn’t struggle to get caught up with life after being on the road? Plus more or less as soon as we got back, Hubby left for a business trip. So while...

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Hands On Experiences at Colonial Williamsburg

Over the course of the week we met families from Georgia, Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Ohio and New York who had come Colonial Williamsburg for the homeschool experience.  During homeschool week they had lots (and lots) of children’s activities.  Every activity we went to was absolutely terrific and educational.  Here are some of the things we attended during the week: We did both the normal orientation walk as well...

Homeschooling in New York 0

Homeschooling in New York

Last year I did a series of interviews with other homeschoolers.  I always enjoy hearing why people choose to set out on the homeschooling path.  I saw an article in The Atlantic about a homeschooling family in New York who has chosen to homeschool their kids and thought I’d share that link with you.  The article is called the Homeschool Diaries.

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Homeschool Week at Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia

  We’ve heard wonderful things about the homeschool programs in Colonial Williamsburg  in some of the yahoo groups. For two weeks in September, there are programs especially for homeschoolers. They offered discount tickets for homeschoolers and their families and have lots of programs and experiences geared specifically for kids.   This year we decided to go with some close friends of ours to check things out. You can spend lots...

The Mansion with 32 Secret Doors!! 0

The Mansion with 32 Secret Doors!!

Have you ever dreamed of visiting an almost magical hotel with secret doors hidden everywhere and art, antiques and nick-nacks of every shape, size and description? It has over 20,000 books and 15,000 pieces of art. It’s a mansion that just begs for exploration — and that’s what our family did spending more nearly five hours exploring every nook and cranny trying to find some of the 32 hidden doors...

Journal Writing, Community Service and More 6

Journal Writing, Community Service and More

We just returned from an amazing vacation. It was exciting, educational and left me inspired and oh so excited about life in general! We packed in so much! That said, I know I’m behind on lots of things — for one thing I usually have blog posts ready a week or two out… but having been on the road for so long, I’m plum out of posts (except the Wednesday...

Celery Experiment 2

Plant Experiments: Colored Carnations and Slurping Celery

ED has been learning about plants this past week or two.  We talked about the various parts of the plant and then read a bit in our science books about the function of the stem (and trunk) of plants.  We revisited an experiment we did 2 1/2 years ago — the celery slurping experiment — as I called it then! This time I bought a bunch of carnations to experiment with...

Thoughts on Being Nice 1

Thoughts on Being Nice

Sometimes I’m not as patient as I should be. Perhaps I haven’t slept quite as much as I should have or one of the kids is having an off day.  I feel grumpy, burdened, moody or cross at the world.  On those occasions I know I’ve been guilty of not being as nice as I could. On those days I need to snap out of it, fake it, listen to good music...