Making Homeschooling Hands-On, Engaging, Meaningful & Memorable! Be inspired by all the possibilities!! Check out our unit studies, packets and printables!
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published February 23, 2017 · Last modified February 21, 2017
The past couple of days, the kids have been writing their own Haikus during our writing workshop time. Your family might have fun with this too! What is a haiku? It is a traditional form of Japanese poetry. These seem simple as they are only three lines, but the kids found it to be tricky! A haiku has 5 syllables in the first line, 7 in the second, and 5...
Homeschool Den / Language Arts: Writing
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published January 3, 2017 · Last modified September 21, 2019
“Mom, I don’t know what to write!” Have you ever heard that in your homeschool? Today I have five ways you can help kids when they are feeling stuck with their writing. At the end of this post, you can download our 35+ page writing resource packet. It is currently FREE to download! Writing Tips: Writing Resource Packet We’ve been using a writing workshop for a couple of years now. ...
Freebies / Homeschool Den / Language Arts: Writing
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published September 19, 2016 · Last modified July 1, 2020
Today I have some writing practice pages to share with you about the concept, “Show Don’t Tell.” The kids and I are spending a number of days talking about this writing strategy. “Show Don’t Tell” helps the reader to experience the story by using descriptions, actions, thoughts, feelings, & emotions. Using this technique helps readers feel like they are right in the middle of the action! Here’s how I explained...
Language Arts - Grammar Spelling Reading Writing Categories / Language Arts - Grammar Worksheets / Language Arts: Reading / Language Arts: Spelling / Language Arts: Writing
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published September 13, 2016
Check out the NEW Language Arts Tab! I have created a resource page with links to dozens of our language arts posts. We have all kinds of resources: Our free grammar pages have always been among the most visited pages on the blog. You’ll find links to our Comma Rules and Practice Pages Apostrophe and Quotation Mark Practice There/They’re/Their and Its/It’s Worksheets and many more!! We have at least 20...
Free Calendar Planning Pages / Homeschool Den / Homeschool: Random Thoughts / Language Arts: Writing
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published May 15, 2016 · Last modified May 16, 2016
Hi Everyone, This is going to be a bit of a random post so bear with me! I’m going to talk about 3 separate things in this post. 1) Our free calendar printable and homeschool planning pages 2) A free end of year questionnaire for students and parents and 3) a random chat about our Homeschool Writing Workshop. Free Calendar, Homeschool Planning Pages and Homeschool Supply List: First, as many...
Language Arts - Grammar Spelling Reading Writing Categories / Language Arts: Books: Children's Literature / Language Arts: Reading / Language Arts: Writing
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published January 4, 2016 · Last modified January 1, 2016
How do you teach literary analysis to kids? Helping students study and analyze literature on a deeper level In our new Writing Workshop Unit this January we are going to go look at books more analytically. Some of our mini-lessons have included story structure (building to a climax, etc); finding topics to write about; looking at the opening of books (hooking the reader); using different techniques such as similes, metaphors,...
Homeschool Den / Language Arts - Grammar Spelling Reading Writing Categories / Language Arts - Grammar Worksheets / Language Arts: Spelling / Language Arts: Writing
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published January 1, 2016 · Last modified September 13, 2016
Language arts is a subject that is always in progress, so it doesn’t make quite as snazzy of a year in review wrap-up, but I thought this might be a good opportunity to share some of our free grammar resources again in a nice, organized table form since those still are so popular. The chart also includes links to our popular Homeschool Writing Workshop series. I’ve also included links to...
I came across this really pretty fall clipart and the kids (and I!!) fell in love with it. We purchased it and decided to use them in our writing workshop. My printer’s out of ink, but we’ll get to it soon. I have two pages of the same image in case anyone wants to print 2 per page. And, if anyone wants me to tweak this in any way (to...
Holiday: Halloween / Homeschool Den / Language Arts: Writing
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published October 19, 2015 · Last modified September 25, 2018
With Halloween coming up and the house decorated with creepy spider webs and stuff, it’s the perfect time to dabble in writing scary stories! I thought I would share the materials I made for the kids for our Writing Workshop. This lesson was all about Writing Scary Stories! Before they delved in to writing their story, I wanted to spend some time talking about what makes a story creepy. Scary...
Homeschool Den / Language Arts: Writing
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published September 14, 2015 · Last modified September 13, 2015
Have your kids read the Plot Chicken? We started our Writing Workshop off with this book. What a great buk, buk!! In fact, I liked it so much that I created a chicken writing rules printable to go along with the book (free to download down below)!!! So, in this post I want to share some of our Writing Workshop Mini-Lessons about the Story Writing Process & Story Structure. The...
Homeschool Den / Homeschool: Our Homeschool (what our day is like, curriculum choices, etc.) / Homeschool: Planning and Preparation / How to Start Homeschooling / Language Arts: Writing
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published September 2, 2015 · Last modified September 7, 2015
Yesterday was our very first day school. We had such an amazing summer (and more about that in another day or so), but it is also great to be back in the groove again! I started the day with my new morning routine (I’ll talk about that more in another post too!), but it left me organized, energized, and ready to go with the kids! ED, of course, was the...
At the beginning of the week, I thought it would helpful for the kids to think about some fundamental questions about writing… Why do we write? Why do we read? What makes for a good story? What makes a story interesting? What inspires you? What kinds of techniques can we use in our writing? What writing habits work best for you? And finally, I had the kids brainstorm alternative words for...
Homeschool Den / Language Arts - Grammar Worksheets / Language Arts: Writing
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published May 14, 2015 · Last modified May 16, 2015
What skills do I want the kids to have in order to become successful writers? For this post, I shared a list of some of the language and literary skills I want the kids to build in elementary and middle school. These are topics and terms I want the kids to be familiar with. As they get older I hope they are able to use and incorporate these naturally into their own...
Homeschool Den / Homeschool: Our Homeschool (what our day is like, curriculum choices, etc.) / Homeschool: Planning and Preparation / Homeschool: Useful Resources (websites books etc) / Language Arts - Grammar Spelling Reading Writing Categories / Language Arts - Grammar Worksheets / Language Arts: Spelling / Language Arts: Writing
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published April 3, 2015 · Last modified May 6, 2017
So, what does our family do for our homeschool language arts curriculum? I’ll share what we’ve been using for 1st through 6th grades. Over the past week, I’ve gotten three separate emails and FB messages asking about what we use for language arts — spelling, grammar and literature. It must be that time of year again when we start thinking about our plans for next year. 😉 I’ll start with...
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.
