Making Homeschooling Hands-On, Engaging, Meaningful & Memorable! Be inspired by all the possibilities!! Check out our unit studies, packets and printables!
Homeschool: Organizing and Cleaning / Homeschool: Our Homeschool (what our day is like, curriculum choices, etc.) / Homeschool: Planning and Preparation / Workboxes
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published September 5, 2013
Yesterday, I mentioned that my friend and I had some really lengthy conversations about homeschooling. We both really want to change up our writing time. I’ve been spending months and months reading books about writing and feel like I have some really wonderful ideas and direction for this part of our homeschool. When I got back, I decided I really wanted a spot where I could feature some of the...
Homeschool Den / Homeschool: Organizing and Cleaning / Homeschool: Planning and Preparation / Must Read / Workboxes
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published March 16, 2013 · Last modified March 16, 2016
This past week we’ve done a heap of fun activities, but I’ve been spending most of my spare time — not blogging — but doing some spring cleaning and organizing. I was in the mood to put some music on and clean… but to be honest, I get overwhelmed by those long, long, looonnnnngg spring cleaning lists. To make sure I’m feeling good about the process I make sure I...
Homeschool Den / Homeschool: Organizing and Cleaning / Homeschool: Our Homeschool (what our day is like, curriculum choices, etc.) / Homeschool: Planning and Preparation / Must Read / Workboxes
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published August 24, 2012 · Last modified March 14, 2019
I’ve spent a lot of time reorganizing our homeschool room this year. I know lots of other homeschoolers are sharing pictures of their learning spaces in the not-back-to-school blog hop. I thought I’d share some photos of our homeschool room as well. In the picture below you see our 3-ring notebooks, the craft table, LD’s writing desk, a bookshelf and DD’s desk (back by the window). A lot of our...
Ages 2-6: Preschool for ED - Fall 2011 (age 3 1/2) / Homeschool: Organizing and Cleaning / Homeschool: Planning and Preparation / Workboxes
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published August 9, 2011 · Last modified March 14, 2019
I often enjoy having a glimpse at other people’s homeschool setups. We had quite a small house over in Australia, but we are now blessed with this amazingly large, airy homeschool room. We have bright colorful workboxes. Each kid has their own row, but I do not fill them every day with new things. Instead their basic subjects get stored here (including the manipulatives, new games, activities and printouts). It...
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: Theme Time (age 2-4) / Ages 2-6: Toddler/Preschool Activities / Homeschool: Our Homeschool (what our day is like, curriculum choices, etc.) / Homeschool: Planning and Preparation / Workboxes
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published November 5, 2010 · Last modified February 20, 2016
I’ve had a hard time getting to the computer this week (more about that in another posting). I have about four posts I’ve been working on–Snippets of DD’s week–age 5, LD’s week – age 7 and my week, not to mention posting pictures of DD’s completed butterfly lapbook. But now these are rather looonnnggg because it’s taken so long to get these posted. So, in reality these are snippets of the...
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...
Homeschool: Planning and Preparation / Homeschool: Random Thoughts / Homeschool: Useful Resources (websites books etc) / Workboxes
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published July 17, 2010
We’ve pretty much resorted to ‘natural learning’ these past two months as we travel from state to state making our way to our new home. But in the meantime, I have been planning and preparing for the new school year to come. We use a smattering of curriculum resources which I distribute into workboxes and centers. While we do most workboxes, most days we don’t have a set orders to...
This year (2009-2010) our main units included natural disasters,China, biomes/animal habitats, ancient Greece (we did ancientEgypt just before this school year officially started and before Istarted this blog), flowers and apples (the last two were gearedmore towards my preschooler). We also enjoyed lots of scienceexperiments (almost weekly) and the younger kids really enjoyedthe theme time tables. We did a lot with geography throughout the year and reallyenjoyed doing country/continent swaps...
This is probably not the typical workbox picture, is it?!As you can see, we’ve broken down the workboxes andstacked them, ready for the movers. Now all schoolsupplies that I’ve chosen for the next few months are inthe green bag there. (Ignore the blue tray; it has manipulatives,workbox subject labels and other random things that haveyet to be packed and put away.)These days, school is considerably less “hands on” sincewe haven’t...
Like many people, we were short on space. Our workboxeswere set up between the kitchen and hallway doors. Imade the red book display case to fit under the hangingbaskets which held some of the bigger books that we usedregularly. The hard plastic files (to the left of the red bookdisplay shelf) helped keep things organized for the work-boxes. They held things like Montessori math manipulativescut up “science-take it to your...
We’ll also be bringing the beloved craft table because it’slong (fits three kids comfortably) and is the perfect heightfor them. A friend made it and it’s been wonderful forsetting up our weekly science experiments and theme time tables.You can have a browse of what we did this past year if you lookthrough the tab at the right.
As I said, the table was quite long and we permanentlyhad the dulcimers (there’s a kids dulcimer not picturedthat we used this year), composer pics, etc. So, while it’sprobably not valuable it sure is functional for us!!
Homeschool: Random Thoughts / Homeschool: Useful Resources (websites books etc) / Workboxes
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published March 12, 2010
I wrote up a detailed post about our homeschool routine (I hesitate to even call it a schedule). I took notes all day so I could show what a real homeschool day looks like here at the homeschool den. The link is in the right sidebar or click here. We have various ways we keep our homeschool materials organized. We use workboxes for most of our academic things (math, math...
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.
