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I saw this wonderful clock idea at Suddenly 2nd Grade — http://mrsnielson-2ndgrade.blogspot.com/. The blog appears not to be up and running any more. Anyway, LD has been working on time in intervals of 5 minutes. This idea and the clock printout made by Mrs. Nielson is great. She has the bottom sheet available to print out too, but when we made it I felt it’d be better for LD to...
Active Math Games / Math General Posts
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published February 16, 2011 · Last modified February 21, 2016
LD continues to work on his first multiplication tables from 1s to 6s — with lots of skip counting along the way. Today I had him working on 4s mostly. It has been quite a long time since we’ve done active math games outside and we had a reprieve in the weather. So we set up a chalk math snail again. LD had to multiply each number by 4. DD...
Homeschool: Useful Resources (websites books etc) / Math General Posts / Math--Addition
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published February 6, 2011
I’ve come across a number of beautiful Valentine’s Day math activities that I plan to use this week with DD. They are so pretty and well done, I just had to share in case someone else might want to incorporate them into their week! I wish I had the time (and health!…I still have a vicious cough from the pneumonia.) to be making such beautiful things, but at the moment...
Science: Obviously we’re working on our Earth Science Unit and that will probably continue for at least another month. We are also working through the Real Science-4 Kids Chemistry book Pre-Level 1. I really like these books and recommended them to my sister (they homeschool) back a couple of years ago. Her kids are older than mine and she went through the Pre-Level one books and then continued on with...
Here are the cards and game boards I made for LD. I cut them out and mounted them on a file folder so you can’t see through the back! The red cards are the 4s times tables plus two enemy tie fighters. The game board has five slots. To play the game all the red cards are turned upside down. Each player takes a turn choosing a card and solving...
This is a bit hard to see, but we made these skip counting rolled papers. As you unfurl the paper it reveals the answer to 4×1, 4×2, etc. LD took a lot of time drawing different styles of star fighters in each rectangle! Then we worked together to fill out the other chart skip counting up through 40. We used these sheets as a reference for the next skip counting...
Hi! It’s great to be back online after a very full holiday season. We’re now back into the swing of things and I’d like to share some new activities the kids and I have started into. I’ll start first with my 5 year old’s math activities the past couple of days: DD is learning basic addition. This week we’re working on the 5s. I gave her the colored construction paper...
Active Math Games / Math General Posts / Math--Addition
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published November 14, 2010
We try to play lots of games — and this one is worth a mention because it involves addition, subtraction and simple multiplication. It’s called Mmm Brains — so it also had great appeal to LD in particular! There’s a large selection of brains. Red brains are each 5 points. White brains are 1 point. There are 5 dice — with the numbers 1 through 5 in different colors (yellow,...
Homeschool: Our Homeschool (what our day is like, curriculum choices, etc.) / Homeschool: Planning and Preparation / Math General Posts / Workboxes
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published November 9, 2010
This post is a long time in coming; it’s taken forever to get this posted! I wanted to share some of the curriculum choices that are working well for our 7 year old this semester. MATH: These past five months or so, we have been using a math workbook for much of LD’s math practice. Only recently have started back on our beloved Right Start Math curriculum. It was written...
Ages 2-6: Preschool (Age 4) / Elem-Children's Music 1 (6 yr old) / Homeschool: Our Homeschool (what our day is like, curriculum choices, etc.) / Homeschool: Planning and Preparation / Kindergarten / Kindergarten Math / Math General Posts / Music / Science: Vertebrates - Invertebrates / Workboxes
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published October 28, 2010 · Last modified July 27, 2018
I’ve been meaning to put up a post about what we generally work on from day to day. But, with blogger not working for a while, I have a plethora of photos to share. So, here’s a glimpse of what DD (just turned 5) has been working on these past couple of weeks. Her “basics” include math, reading, handwriting, music/glockenspiel, arts&crafts; and another unit-study (a lapbook in this case, but...
Piggy bank counting —In this activity, the kids each had their own sets of coins and ‘piggy bank.’ (DD had nickles and pennies; LD had quarters, dimes, nickles and pennies.) LD tossed his coins onto his piggy bank. He got to ‘keep’ the ones that were heads up. He sorted those and got rid of all the ones on ‘tails.” Before counting his coins he had to trade in his...
It’s been a long time since I mentioned these math gameboards from The School Bell. DD and I have played these addition fact games. Let’s say DD and I were playing on the 5s gameboard. DD drew a 5 card, then she would move her piece to the next 0. On my turn, if I drew a 4, I would move my piece to the next 1 on the board....
Here was a quick math activity for DD. The princess bookmarks were from here. It had been a while since LD did this place value activity, so I added this in to our other activities. I really like the purple paper beads which I printed out from here. I bound 10 sets of 100s with a brad to make a 1000 bead bunch. While we also have actual Montessori beads,...
Active Math Games / Kindergarten Math / Math General Posts / Math--Addition / Math: Preschool Math
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published September 8, 2010
These past six weeks or so, LD has been doing a lot of work in his math workbook (that’s not terribly exciting to blog about, is it?!!). That was easiest for me while we were on travel and as we settled in. We generally use Right Start Math, but it is quite Mom-intensive, so we had to put that on the back burner for a while. In fact, we only...
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.
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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.
