Making Homeschooling Hands-On, Engaging, Meaningful & Memorable! Be inspired by all the possibilities!! Check out our unit studies, packets and printables!
We learned about the eight planets in our Solar System. While the kids painted with watercolors, I sang this song from the Smithsonian, National Air and Space Museum Website. It’s called “Family of the Sun” and has one verse describing each of the eight planets (plus Pluto, the dwarf planet). It’s sung to the Farmer in the Dell: Here’s the first two verses and the chorus:1)Mercury is hotand Mercury is...
Science / Science: Earth Science Unit
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published December 6, 2010 · Last modified February 17, 2018
I thought this was such a great idea for talking about our location, size and placement in the universe. It’d even be great for a study of maps. What a great lesson on where we live!! I had these all stacked together and went over these one by one asking them which galaxy we live in, what planet, what state, city, street etc. Then piled them one on top of...
Science / Science: Earth Science Unit
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published December 1, 2010 · Last modified December 24, 2015
Today we had our second earth science lesson. LD begged to do science again and I always love that enthusiasm! I’m still using Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding: A Science Curriculum for K-2 (affliliate link) as the basis for some of our lessons. *I read an excerpt about how the earth isn’t the only place with gravity. The moon and other planets have gravity too. We talked about how people...
Science / Science: Earth Science Unit
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published November 29, 2010 · Last modified December 24, 2015
We have been making slow headway through our Ancient Rome unit, but we needed some new spice added into our homeschool days. We’re off to do a unit on earth science — studying concepts such as gravity, horizontal/vertical, directionality–N,S,E,W, and then moving on to the layers of the earth and the surface of the earth — the “ups and downs, ins and outs” of the landforms and waterforms and how...
Ages 2-6: Fall Theme / Science / Science Experiments
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published November 11, 2010
Some time back, I shared our Indian corn activity. It’s now growing quite tall in big pots at the end of our dining room table! So here’s the corn after about 1 week of being watered. After a while we decided to plant the corn in some empty flower pots. The corn grew steadily. And now it’s about 12-15 inches high! Unfortunately, the corn cob attracted lots of fruit flies. ...
A few weeks ago, LD pulled out a project he started back in Australia — a lapbook on carnivorous plants (free from http://dynamic2moms.webs.com/carnivorousplants.htm) He enjoyed reading up on these plants again and put it all together.
Ages 2-6: Preschool (Age 4) / Ages 2-6: Preschool at Home / Lapbooks / Science / Science: Vertebrates - Invertebrates
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published November 6, 2010 · Last modified December 9, 2019
A few weeks ago, I asked DD what she wanted to learn about. She chose to study butterflies and insects. We used two lapbooks. One is no longer available. The other one was a free lapbook on butterflies from Yee Shall Know. (Website no longer available.) (If you’ve never seen any of her lapbooks, I highly recommend her free lapbooks. (Website no longer available.) They are based on the Magic...
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...
We’ve had a lot of mosquito larvae in our make-shift frog/toad habitat. We watched a fascinating, informative video about the mosquito’s life cycle here. We didn’t know that the mosquito larvae breathe through a tube at the surface of the water. Also we learned that mosquito eggs can live through the winter and hatch in the spring. Meanwhile, we have about 20-25 tadpoles that have survived in our habitat and...
History: Geologic Timeline (Montessori) / Science: Dinosaurs Unit
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published September 3, 2010 · Last modified February 3, 2016
We had so much fun with our huge dinosaur project. A teacher on a website I saw somewhere (sorry, I forget where) mentioned having her class make a “trash-o-saurus.” I thought that was a brilliant idea, especially as we have SO much packing paper from our move. We looked around the yard for some items to help us make the structure (bone system) of our dinosaur. The previous owners left...
History: Geologic Timeline (Montessori) / Science: Dinosaurs Unit
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published September 2, 2010 · Last modified February 3, 2016
We came across a wonderful idea here at U.C. Berkley: The Dinosaur Body to learn more about body structure and how dinosaurs had to be perfectly balanced to stand and move. I read the paragraphs about the importance of balance and had the kids balance a ruler on their fingers and then add a light head and a heavy head (the heavy head made the ruler tip over and you...
History: Geologic Timeline (Montessori) / Science: Dinosaurs Unit
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published September 1, 2010 · Last modified February 3, 2016
We looked up the length of several well-known dinosaurs, grabbed our plastic models and then went outside to see how long they really were. We chose stegosaurus 30 feet T-Rex 40 feet apatosaurus 90 feet We looked at how long one foot was (we hadn’t done measuring in feet before as we’ve used the metric system up until now) — and then measured out the dinosaurs’ lengths using a 20...
History: Geologic Timeline (Montessori) / Science: Dinosaurs Unit
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published September 1, 2010 · Last modified February 1, 2015
At the beginning of our activity we looked at this real fern fossil (from Pennsylvania). We talked about how ferns have been around for millions of years and fossil records indicate they were around well before dinosaurs (we referred back to the chart we have on “what came first” from a previous day.) Then we went into our woods and looked for different kinds of ferns for making our own...
History: Geologic Timeline (Montessori) / Science: Dinosaurs Unit
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published September 1, 2010
In the past couple of weeks we read lots and lots of books about dinosaurs and have pulled out lots of different puzzles. LD got this for his birthday a couple of years ago and it was just perfect to pull out for this unit!
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.
