Making Homeschooling Hands-On, Engaging, Meaningful & Memorable! Be inspired by all the possibilities!! Check out our unit studies, packets and printables!
Homeschool Den / Must Read / Nature / Outdoor Fun / Summer Activities
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published April 25, 2014 · Last modified December 2, 2020
Are you looking for free Nature Scavenger Hunt printables? We have several fun options! Every spring, as the weather gets nicer and nicer we spend more and more time outdoors. We’ve been doing this scavenger hunt for years. I know we’re not alone because this printable has gotten well over 50,000 downloads since I first made it years ago!! We found a lot of cool critters that very first year we did...
Freebies / Homeschool Den / Science / Science: Earth Science Unit / Science: Weather Unit
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published April 21, 2014 · Last modified September 6, 2018
Layers of the Atmosphere Packet (Now Updated!) Worksheets, Notebook Pages and Hands-On Activities! The Layers of the Atmosphere Packet has worksheets, notebook pages and various hands-on activities. It has well over 50 pages of materials. Here are some of the topics we cover: Earth System Science — the “spheres” including the atmosphere, geosphere, hydrosphere, cryosphere, biosphere, and magnetosphere the five layers of the atmosphere: Troposphere Stratosphere Mesosphere Thermosphere Exosphere The...
Freebies / Must Read / Science: Earth Science Unit / Science: Water Unit / Science: Weather Unit
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published April 16, 2014 · Last modified September 3, 2020
What is meteorology? What tools do scientists use to study the weather? These are some of the basic questions we covered as we started off our weather unit! Below are the pages we went over on our first day… it covers a few basics and some background about the history of meteorology. I also rounded up some interesting weather facts and we read through those as well. Then we’ll be jumping...
Ages 2-6: Preschool (Age 4) / Freebies / Holiday: Easter / Homeschool Den / Science / Science Experiments
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published April 14, 2014 · Last modified December 5, 2018
This activity helps kids understand how very important it is to brush your teeth every day! For this activity we chose coke, grape soda (we didn’t have any grape juice) and coffee. You can use any beverage that you think will stain your teeth. The kids each selected two drinks and we let the eggs soak for several hours. As the kids “brushed” their eggs, they were amazed at...
Ages 2-6: Pete the Cat Unit / Freebies / Kindergarten Math / Math General Posts / Math--Addition
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published March 24, 2014 · Last modified May 11, 2023
If you are doing a Pete the Cat Unit, your kids might enjoy these FREE Addition Subtraction Worksheets inspired by Pete the Cat! My daughter borrowed several Pete the Cat books (affiliate link) from the library last week. She’s been reading them over and over, so I made her a couple of math practice pages with a Pete the Cat type theme! She quickly used up those pages and I...
Ages 2-6: Preschool (Age 4) / Ages 2-6: Preschool at Home / History: Geography Activities / Homeschool Den / Kindergarten / Montessori (general info)
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published March 19, 2014 · Last modified October 16, 2022
World Animal Packet: This 70+ page packet helps kids learn about animals on every continent! It includes Montessori 3-Part Cards, Activity Sheets for every continent, printable continent cards, a world animal game, world animal pin map activity, and more! The last two weeks I shared some of ED’s animal-related activities. She looked closely at the vertebrate-invertebrate groups and we talked a lot about the characteristics of the animals of the...
Ages 2-6: Preschool (Age 4) / Homeschool Den / Montessori (general info) / Science / Science: Vertebrates - Invertebrates
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published March 12, 2014 · Last modified November 2, 2022
Animals and their Characteristics – The 5 Animal Groups These free pages are down below! Last week my daughter worked on vertebrates and invertebrates. From there she started working on the 5 animal groups. I also wanted to go over the characteristics of the various vertebrate animal groups with her. As she sorted the animal groups we talked about some of the characteristics of each group… fish and amphibians lay...
Homeschool Encouragement / Homeschool: Our Homeschool (what our day is like, curriculum choices, etc.) / Homeschool: Planning and Preparation / Homeschool: Random Thoughts
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published January 18, 2014 · Last modified April 30, 2016
Someone recently asked me how to get started homeschooling. She was interested in creating some unit studies for her kids and wanted to know where to start. Since I tend to create our history and science units myself, I thought I’d try to share how I pull our units together. I’ve written a lot of related posts about homeschooling things like planning, preparation, assessing our long term and short term...
Homeschool Den / Homeschool Encouragement / Homeschool: Our Homeschool (what our day is like, curriculum choices, etc.) / Homeschool: Planning and Preparation
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published November 26, 2013 · Last modified July 27, 2018
I thought I would put a post together that helps give a flavor of what our daily homeschooling routine looks like. So many of my posts are compilations of our activities, but they don’t actually show what happens day-to-day. It’s about time to do that again (and I enjoy reading these posts later as the kids get older!) We have finally gotten back to a relatively normal schedule. (If you...
We have a wonderful tech team here at Parents. You might have noticed that the categories feature of my blog is now back! Hooray! Ever since I started this blog I have been categorizing things into different units. If you’re doing a study of Ancient Egypt or natural disasters, the human body or the ocean, or just want to look through the dozens and dozens of posts I did when...
Science / Science: Digestive System / Science: Human Body Unit
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published October 23, 2013 · Last modified August 21, 2022
We had an amazing time studying the Digestive System. We did a whole range of hands-on activities from making our own epiglottis to seeing how the digestive tract works (how nutrients pass through). We made “fake”vomit, measured out the length of the digestive system and more! I also made notebook for the kids as we went through this unit. Our Digestive System Packet is now 150+ pages. Our Digestive System...
Must Read / Science: Human Body Unit
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published October 17, 2013 · Last modified February 21, 2022
I created a hands-on activity for the kids for learning about the circulatory system and the exchange of oxygen. Below you’ll find out more about our circulatory system activities: Our study of the heart and circulatory system started with a listen to our own heartbeats. We measured our heart rates when resting and after walking, running and skipping. Then using a graph put out by Texas heart institute (4th grade curriculum,...
Science / Science: Rocks and Minerals
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published October 13, 2013 · Last modified April 23, 2021
Are you studying Rocks and Minerals?! Be sure to check out this post again which covers how rocks have been used, famous rock landmarks, how we use minerals in our environment, mining, recycling and the months and birthstones. Be sure to check out the links to our hands-on activities about the three types of rocks: sedimentary, igneous and metamorphic which you’ll find below. This week, I’m out of commission. I’m...
Kindergarten / Science / Science: Vertebrates - Invertebrates
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published October 4, 2013 · Last modified July 27, 2021
Last week, ED spent some time learning about the different animal groups — mammals, birds, fish, reptiles and amphibians. We talked about some of the different characteristics of each group and she spent time separating them into the different categories. We have a number of different activities and she spent several days going through our various activities: One was from a book called Take It to Your Seat Science Centers and...
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.
