Making Homeschooling Hands-On, Engaging, Meaningful & Memorable! Be inspired by all the possibilities!! Check out our unit studies, packets and printables!
After many of our experiments, LD and DD want tocreate their own experiments. They add all kinds ofingredients to see what happens. In this “experiment”they added (as I recall): water, vinegar, baking soda, margarine, flour, yeast,peppermint, cinnamon, food coloring and pepper. They took it out to the garden to see what it woulddo to the ant trail. I heard that their “ant poison”worked (I was cooking dinner and didn’t observe).
While ED and DD painted, LD wanted to workon his body — no weight lifting involved! He laydown on the paper and I did a rough outline ofhis body. Then he put together the bone puzzlefrom a book that Grams gave us.
We looked at the organs in the human body in thebook that Grams gave us and I penciled them inlightly on outline pictures of the kids’ bodies (bythis time DD wanted her outline done — and thenED immediately lay down on the paper and wantedhers done too!) I suggested to LD that he colorthe organs in (the book had them colored). Heoutlined them instead. DD and ED spent a lot...
Science: Natural Disasters Unit and Activities
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published October 20, 2009 · Last modified February 17, 2018
Our last experiment (demonstration perhaps is a better word) was on plate movements. We looked at a map of the world’s plates, then made our own out of clay. On each plate was a continent (raised) and ocean (lower parts). We talked about how plates move around. Under each plate we put some magma (corn syrup and red food dye). When the plates are moving nothing happens to the magma (picture 1) Sometimes plates...
Science: Natural Disasters Unit and Activities
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published October 20, 2009
Here’s the cover of LD’s Natural DisasterBook. His book is over 30 pages long!
Science: Natural Disasters Unit and Activities
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published October 20, 2009 · Last modified April 19, 2020
We’ve done a huge unit on natural disasters this term. LD has been asking and asking when we could finally finish up the lapbook (which we actually put together with a comb binder). I got things ready and figured we spend the week putting things together. LD decided he wanted to do it ALL on Monday. He barely even let me get a quick lunch together. He spent close to...
Science: Natural Disasters Unit and Activities
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published October 20, 2009
Here are some of the pages from LD’s book. The natural disaster picture cards are available atwww.currclick.com for $2.00 US. We used some of the lapbook materials fromhttp://www.homeschoolshare.com/volcanoes.php andhttp://www.homeschoolshare.com/earthquakes.php
Science: Natural Disasters Unit and Activities
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published October 20, 2009
The cute exploding volcano was fromhttp://printables.scholastic.com/printables/detail/?id=31815 All in all, LD learned a lot this term. He sure isproud of the final product! I was amazed at theenergy and focus he had to put everythingtogether. He’s been bringing it everywherewe go (including to Standley Chasm!) justin case there was someone there who mightwant to look at it.
Science: Natural Disasters Unit and Activities
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published September 9, 2009 · Last modified May 14, 2016
Our tornado in a bottle didn’t turn out as well as the ones online did, but we did get it to work. (It didn’t work when we used food dye, oil and water. everything turned red.) LD wanted to “do his own experiment” with the oil and food dye (which he noticed formed bubbles in the oil). He put the oil and dye on a leaf, broke the bubbles...
Science: Natural Disasters Unit and Activities
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published September 8, 2009 · Last modified September 17, 2020
We have been doing a unit on natural disasters. We have yet to put our lapbook together, but I’ll share some of the activities we did. (Still to come in the next couple of days is the tornado activity.) Update: We have a new Natural Disasters Packet. See you again soon here or Homeschool Den Facebook page. Don’t forget to Subscribe to our Homeschool Den Newsletter! ~Liesl You can find out more about...
Science: Natural Disasters Unit and Activities
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published September 8, 2009 · Last modified May 14, 2016
The majority of damage from hurricanes comes from heavy winds. We watched a youtube video about hurricanes where the wind blew the roof off of a house. Then we did our own activity. We built a house out of index cards and then tested their strength with level one winds (one straw). Seeing that the house blew down, we reinforced it (with more tape). It then withstood the level one...
Science: Natural Disasters Unit and Activities
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published September 8, 2009 · Last modified March 19, 2018
Our next activity was to recreate a tsunami. In a flat pan, the kids built up a sandy beach (sand, corn flour) and built little houses. Then they added water and created an earthquake. It didn’t work when the kids hit the table with the bat, but when the table was given a good shake the tsunami hit fill force! We looked...
Science: Natural Disasters Unit and Activities
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published September 8, 2009 · Last modified January 4, 2018
Last January we made a volcano out of paper mache. This time around we just used sand and corn flour. The mixture actually dried to rock hard (later), but the kids didn’t have the patience to wait a full day. Of course we had to make our “lava” realistic by using not just baking soda and vinegar but also red food dye and dish soap (to add to the foaming...
Science: Natural Disasters Unit and Activities
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published September 8, 2009 · Last modified May 14, 2016
We talked about mud slides and land slides. Mud slides usually occur after heavy rains, so our butter container (again covered with our sand/corn flour concoction) was watered for a time and the mud slid down the “mountain.” The girls enjoyed playing in the mud for a long time after that while LD kept exploding his volcano again and again!
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.
