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Science: Garden Science / Science: Plant Unit
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published May 15, 2011 · Last modified March 22, 2016
We continue to love the activities in the Junior Master Gardener Curriculum. I love that all three of the kids can be fully involved in these activities! This week we continued to look at monocot and dicots, studied plant roots and looked at the age of trees. In our first activity the kids gathered flowers from our yard. Then they had to determine whether the plants were monocots or dicots...
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published May 2, 2011 · Last modified March 22, 2016
One of our activities before our holiday had us thinking about the ingredients of a hamburger and where each ingredient originated (and how everything, even the hamburger itself, tied back to plants). It was time to use some of our Montessori sorting cards again since they helped the kids contemplate where their food comes from. Where Does Food Come From? From Plant to Food (Montessori for Everyone): This set had...
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published April 26, 2011 · Last modified February 3, 2016
Knowing we’d be doing the hamburger plant activity and to get us into the proper mood, we had hamburgers for dinner the night before! This activity came from the instructor’s manual of the Junior Master Gardener program. The next morning we drew pictures of an imaginary hamburger plant. The purpose of this activity was to discuss the origins of many of the ingredients in a hamburger. When you trace things...
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...
Homeschool: Random Thoughts / Recipes / Science
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published April 22, 2011
There is so much to consider about buying salmon. I sure didn’t realize any of this so thought I’d share. 1) Salmon are carnivores. In the wild they start eating microscopic plants and animals. As they get bigger they eat tiny crustaceans (krill) which gives them their pink color and then larger fish. 2) Farmed salmon is a nice gray color. Hmmm… but salmon farmers resort to cosmetics to change...
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published April 12, 2011 · Last modified March 3, 2016
Here are the other two experiments LD and the girls did. It sure was nice just stepping back to watch the kids do this themselves this time round. Color Changing Milk 1) Pour milk onto a plate 2) Add three drops of food coloring (red, blue, yellow) 3) Place a Q-tip in dishsoap. Then carefully place the Q-tip in the center of the plate without moving it around. The colors...
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published April 11, 2011 · Last modified October 22, 2015
LD was itching to do some of his old science experiments this morning. We had all of the directions collected on a 3X5 ring (from when we did them a year+ ago). LD leafed through and chose several experiments. Here is the first one he and the girls did. It’s been over a year since we last did this experiment, but it still had a real “wow” factor for all...
I heard an interview on NPR this past week about a live camera feed in Iowa on an eagle’s nest. As the gentleman was speaking he panned in and out on the eaglets. As of few days ago two of the eggs had hatched (one April 2nd and one April 3rd) and one more had yet to hatch: http://www.ustream.tv/decoraheagles **Update — the third egg hatched last night. You can see...
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,...
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published March 18, 2011 · Last modified March 22, 2016
As I’ve mentioned before our house is nestled down in the woods. The former owners cut up logs and threw them into a huge pile which is now happily decomposing. We’ve used some of this mulch in our garden areas (well away from the house). Here’s some of what we’ve observed from this decomposing pile! We found lots of these large beetles in our mulch pile. My best guess is...
Lapbooks / Science / Science: Garden Science / Science: Plant Unit
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published March 16, 2011 · Last modified March 22, 2016
DD made a sunflower lapbook. I finally have a few minutes to share her work here. She colored the front page and decided she didn’t want a title on the front cover so I added it into the photo digitally. I purchased this Sunflower Unit Study/Lapbook on currclick. It was $1.00 (USdol) — and was totally worth it since both DD and I learned a lot of new information. You...
Food in America (concerns) / Recipes / Science / Science: Garden Science
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published February 23, 2011 · Last modified March 22, 2016
I have been reading a lot of books about gardening and food. Oh my, I’ve learned so much about our food sources… I went on for so long, I pushed my thoughts/rants down to later in this post. Anyway, I told LD that he could have his own plot in the garden and he could choose whatever seeds he wanted to plant. He is SO excited and wanted to start...
Science / Science: Earth Science Unit
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published February 9, 2011 · Last modified July 19, 2018
The most common types of mountains are fold mountains. Some fold mountains include the Himalayas, Andes, Rockies, and Alps. This activity showed how plate movement creates folded mountains.When the two continents collide, the plates wrinkle and fold. Here’s our activity to show this happening. It’s the same principle as the damp graham cracker we did a few days ago, but this shows the “layers” of the earth folding/wrinkling. Showing how...
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.
