Making Homeschooling Hands-On, Engaging, Meaningful & Memorable! Be inspired by all the possibilities!! Check out our unit studies, packets and printables!
DD has been devoted to harvesting the garden. She goes down almost daily to gather lettuce, carrots and snap peas. She washes everything, cuts it up and makes us a salad. It’s so sweet — and wonderful to get them so excited about eating veggies! She makes ED wash her hands to come eat a salad. “It’s like I’m the Mom,” DD told me proudly. Look how tall the sunflowers...
What inspired me to train again: My kids are such an inspiration. They have boundless energy. I have been amazed and proud at how much they have grown this year as individuals. LD has such amazing strength — I find it astonishing for a seven year old. (That’s LD at the top of the rope. He went zipping up really fast! He has more arm strength than I have ever...
We’re enjoying lots of playdates and time with friends this summer. What a beautiful park! On another note, I think I’m going to train for a half-marathon in September. I’m excited to have a big goal — just for ME! 🙂 It has been years since I last trained for anything. My last marathon was on the Sydney Olympic marathon coarse… and I finished in the Sydney Olympic stadium with...
I was so excited to find this website — enature.com. It lets you listen to the sounds made by frogs and toads. Since we have a symphony of frog calls at night it’s pretty neat knowing which one’s which! Here are the frogs and toads we’ve come across (in the hundreds) here in our neck of the woods: Pickerel Frog: Fowler’s Toad: Northern Cricket Frog: Cope’s Gray Treefrog:
The past week we had a wonderful time with our friends. We took them on a short hike through the woods and spent a lot of time looking for frogs and things. LD couldn’t get enough time down at the creek and spent a couple hours each afternoon hunting things down. We found a bunch of new (to us) critters! How exciting! I think this little guy is a Northern...
Today LD found a turtle out in the yard. We think it is an Eastern Box Turtle. We learned quite a bit about these critters: *Turtles can live 50-100 years.*Turtles as a species have been around for 250 million years.*Turtles eat insects, earthworms, millipedes, beetles, caterpillars, fruit, mushrooms, berries and vegetables.*The plastron or lower shell of the turtle can help identify its sex. Male turtles’ lower shells are concave (goes...
Nature / Outdoor Fun / Science: Garden Science
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published April 24, 2011 · Last modified March 22, 2016
Gardening continues to be a rewarding part of our home life. We all have an incredible enthusiasm for our new gardening adventures! Here’s a glimpse at our veggie garden. I put in planks to keep ED and the others from wandering all over the garden. They enjoy balancing along them and have claimed certain sections for themselves! We already have quite a large number of lettuce plants (since that’s one...
Nature / Outdoor Fun / Science: Garden Science
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published March 26, 2011 · Last modified March 22, 2016
We have been outside working in the gardens almost every afternoon (for 2-3 hours). This is such a huge part of our life right now, I just had to write a bit about that again. I thought the girls looked particularly cute yesterday. Yes, I let my girls garden in velvet dresses!! They are looking intently for grubs because I mentioned that that they aren’t good for the garden. When...
History: Middle Ages / Nature / Outdoor Fun / Science: Garden Science
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published March 22, 2011
The other evening I came home during a thunderstorm. The toads were covering the road leading to our house. Not one or two, but so many that I couldn’t drive the car around them. I went back a little later and there weren’t nearly as many, but still saw at least 50 toads! And saw that even though I was driving about 5mph and swerving wildly from side to side,...
We had a lot of fun outside yesterday. We caught lots and lots of little tadpoles (and then let most of them go), as well as a couple of 3-inch frogs. We came across a snake which I’ve tried and tried to identify. My best guess is that it is a water snake (another book to borrow from the library!). And finally, we found another quite amazing looking mushroom growing...
Last weekend was LD’s birthday; he turned seven. We still don’t know anyone well enough to have over to celebrate his birthday with us, but we had a wonderful day at the county fair! We were surprised how few people were there — especially compared to “Show Days” (the annual fair that came to our town in central Australia). I wasn’t quite up to getting the kids organized to submit...
We have lots and lots of empty boxes out on the porch. Today it was time to break down lots of them and we found this seven-inch lizard in one of the boxes. We think it is a ‘common five-lined skink’ — probably the adult version of the smaller, blue-tailed lizards we see all over (the Internet indicates that the blue tails fade as they mature.)
“This is the best day of my life!” That’s what LD had to say about the nature journaling we started a couple of days ago. He was SO excited about drawing all the things we had discovered in the woods that he kept begging for more and more time. WHAT?!!! Our son said that?! It’s wonderful to find somethings that is so appealing to him (especially if it involves writing/drawing)....
We are thoroughly enjoying our new environment. It is completely different than the Outback, but has so much to offer in its own beautiful way. These next few postings will show how much we’ve enjoyed exploring! We are so, so happy in our new home. We just wish Daddy weren’t having to work such long hours. 🙁 LD found this cute orange salamander. We see lots and lots of blue-tailed...
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.
