Homeschool Den

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When Kids Want to Quit 5

Health / Homeschool Den / Homeschool: Random Thoughts / Must Read / sports

When Kids Want to Quit

You’ve bought the supplies, paid the dues, your child starts an activity… only to announce not long after that he doesn’t want to participate. The shoes are too tight, the coach is too mean, the drills are ‘boring,’ it’s just “not fun.” Yes, extracurricular activities can be enriching and rewarding, but sometimes your child wants to quit not long after he’s begun. What’s a parent to do? We’ve handled this...

Cooperative Games: The Secret Door 0

Games for Thinking and Learning / Homeschool Den / Must Read

Cooperative Games: The Secret Door

We have several cooperative games that we play pretty regularly.  I love that there is no winner or loser!  A few weeks ago we borrowed another cooperative game from a friend called, The Secret Door. It was a huge hit with all of my kids! In this game there are clock cards and object cards. Set Up: Before the game starts you place three object cards behind the wooden door....

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Freebies / History: Africa Unit / History: Ancient Egypt / History: World Religions / Homeschool Den / Must Read

Ancient Egypt: Gods, Goddesses and Myths (Free Worksheet Set)

We have been learning a lot about the myths of Ancient Egypt. While I read to the kids, they often work on their own art. I came across a wonderful drawing book Ralph Masiello’s Ancient Egypt Drawing Book  (affiliate link) that the kids have been using to create their own Ancient Egyptian-themed drawings. Below they are drawing the Ancient Egyptian god, Osiris:  Another day the kids drew Ra as they...

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History: Africa Unit / History: Ancient Egypt / History: Geography Activities / Homeschool Den / Must Read

Ancient Egypt Unit: Creating the Nile River Valley

We started our unit on Ancient Egypt with a geography project. This is one we did about four years ago as well, but it was well worth repeating! We placed sand in an old plastic container. Then using toilet paper and paper towel rolls, we created the base for the winding Nile River. We covered that with aluminum foil. In upper Egypt we created the ‘mountains.’ We sprinkled potting soil...

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Ages 2-6: Preschool (Age 4) / Ages 2-6: Preschool and Toddler Activities / Ages 2-6: Toddler/Preschool Activities / Homeschool Den / Must Read

Toddler and Preschooler Activities — A Big Long List!

About six months ago I made a huge list of things to do with my preschooler. This weekend I’ve been going through that list again for my daughter and I thought I’d mention it again on the blog for those of you who might have missed it. Here are some of the kinds of activities we’ve done: Again, here is the printable list if you would like to download a...

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Freebies / Homeschool Den / Must Read / Science / Science: Chemistry Unit

Building Molecules Chemistry Activity

We moved on from talking about atoms to talking about molecules and chemical bonds. Since my kids are pretty young, this is just a basic introduction to how bonds are formed and made. Building Molecules Worksheet: This is a free download. The screen shot below shows 2 of 3 pages. We spent several days building different kinds of molecules: On the first day we built water, oxygen, hydrogen and hydrogen...

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Ages 2-6: Clocks - Telling Time / Ages 2-6: Preschool (Age 4) / Freebies / Homeschool Den / Math General Posts / Must Read

Telling Time Practice Sheets

The kids are reviewing time in math at the moment.  Going with the same kitty theme (see the preschool math sheets I made Counting Kitties from Monday’s post), I made clocks cards for ED. If you’re interested in these two pages, you’ll need to click on both links below: Kitty-Clock Analog Clock Kitty-Clock-Digital She is using them both for matching and to play a board game.   This is the...

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Ages 2-6: Preschool (Age 4) / Critical Thinking Activities / Games for Thinking and Learning / Must Read

Games for Thinking and Learning: Blink

This is a series about the logic and critical thinking games we play in our homeschool.  We have a table in our homeschool room and I rotate in new games a couple of times a week. These are all games we’ve acquired for schooling and/or for fun (I haven’t received them to review). Today I’m going to highlight a card game called Blink that is a great game for preschoolers on...

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Homeschool Den / Must Read / Science Experiments / Science: Chemistry Unit

Science Experiments: Water Molecule Attraction

Matter is made of tiny particles that are attracted to one another. We did a series of experiments activities from Middle School Chemistry (the free, downloadable chemistry course) that show that water molecules are, indeed attracted to one another. We first used a medicine dropper to see how much water we could push out of the syringe. We also examined the pictures of the droplets we managed to photograph in...

Why You Shouldn’t Reward Kids for Learning 7

Homeschool Den / Homeschool: Random Thoughts / Homeschool: Useful Resources (websites books etc) / Language Arts: Reading / Must Read

Why You Shouldn’t Reward Kids for Learning

Plato: Knowledge that is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind. This past summer we chose not to participate in our library’s reading program. At one point, we were chatting with a librarian and she asked if the kids were doing the library’s summer reading program. She was shocked when I told her we weren’t participating this year. “May I ask why?” she wanted to know. I had a...

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Freebies / Homeschool Den / Must Read / Science / Science: Chemistry Unit

Chemistry: Molecule Movement Experiment and Chemistry Review Worksheet

We’ve been covering the states of matter, atoms and molecules in chemistry. I wanted review some of the information we’ve covered and made some basic worksheets for the kids. First, we went over the three states of matter and looked closely again at the parts of an atom. Molecule Movement Experiment: Then we did a simple experiment with water to show that water molecules can move at different rates. We...

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Critical Thinking Activities / Games for Thinking and Learning / Homeschool Den / Must Read

Games for Thinking and Learning: Lab Mice

This is a series about the logic and critical thinking games we play in our homeschool.  We have a table in our homeschool room and I rotate in new games a couple of times a week. These are all games we’ve acquired for schooling (I haven’t received them to review).  Back in September I explained… Why games? They’re fun. They can be challenging and helps kids (and adults!) apply creative...

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Freebies / Homeschool Den / Language Arts - Grammar Worksheets / Language Arts: Writing / Must Read

Grammar Practice Sheets: Apostrophes, Quotation Marks and Underlining (and others)

We tend to switch back and forth between our spelling program and our grammar work.  This past week we worked on grammar and I made a few more sheets that paralleled the topics that were covered in our Write Source Skills Book (here’s a link to Grade 2 and Grade 4).  If you’re interested you can download the worksheets I made for the kids. They cover the use of apostrophes, quotation...

Last Week was Hard!! Homeschool Realities… 1

Homeschool Den / Homeschool: Our Homeschool (what our day is like, curriculum choices, etc.) / Homeschool: Random Thoughts / Language Arts: Reading / Must Read

Last Week was Hard!! Homeschool Realities…

Sometimes homeschooling is wonderful packed with endless projects and terrific successes. I like blogging about all that. But sometimes life just isn’t like that. This past week was really challenging. We were just coming back from a trip. Who doesn’t struggle to get caught up with life after being on the road? Plus more or less as soon as we got back, Hubby left for a business trip. So while...