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Homeschool: Random Thoughts / Science: Garden Science
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published May 23, 2011
Today’s my birthday, so this post is about… well me! I am so happy! Not that I wasn’t happy in Australia, but I was ready for a change and boy is life wonderful here! I’ve managed to find a musical outlet here (I played the oboe in a wind ensemble for 10 years in Australia). Here I’m singing in my church choir and have had the opportunity to play the...
LD pulled out his microscope this week and has been using all the science slides and rushing outside to bring things to look at. “MOM!!” he shouted at one point. “You’ve gotta check this out.” “Wow. What is it honey?” “My booger. I never knew it would look like this.” “Umm… yeah. Neat.” Glad to know he’s so inquisitive, but yucko. (I made HIM wash the slide and slip cover!)...
Homeschool: Planning and Preparation / Homeschool: Random Thoughts
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published May 19, 2011 · Last modified March 3, 2015
I’ve been having a thoughtful discussion with a blogging friend of mine. We’ve been talking about the reality of homeschooling… how it really works with a three year old in tow, what curriculum we use and things like that. I would love, love, love to hear your comments about how your day goes — and how you arrive at your homeschool curriculum decisions!Here’s part of my email letter to my...
Language Arts - Grammar Worksheets / Language Arts: Reading
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published May 18, 2011
I’ve made a few worksheets to go with our language and spelling lessons, but only just started writing them on google docs. I’ll post them in my Free Downloads area if anyone is ever interested. They’re plain old worksheets, but this seems to work really well for my son to help review language rules with an absolute minimum of writing (which we do in other areas of our homeschool day)....
Here’s the reading update on DD, age 5 1/2. The past couple of months, DD has been doing lots of independent reading. We came to the end of her phonics program (we used Bob Books and then the Primary Phonics storybooks, sets 1-6) and it was time to set her free with the books we have on hand. I did this with LD as well and I can’t recommend independent...
Science: Garden Science / Science: Plant Unit
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published May 15, 2011 · Last modified March 22, 2016
We continue to love the activities in the Junior Master Gardener Curriculum. I love that all three of the kids can be fully involved in these activities! This week we continued to look at monocot and dicots, studied plant roots and looked at the age of trees. In our first activity the kids gathered flowers from our yard. Then they had to determine whether the plants were monocots or dicots...
We had a really busy week this week. Among other things we went to a museum with friends. The kids absolutely loved the hands-on portion. Since the kids had their gymnastics as well that day, they practically fell into bed that night!
Math General Posts / Math--Addition
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published May 10, 2011 · Last modified March 23, 2017
A pack of Crazy Eight cards from the dollar store comes in handy for doing math fact games. Addition Facts Game: Each player started with five cards. There’s a discard pile and a draw pile. Each player takes a turn drawing or picking up a card from the discard pile. The first time we played, we used the numbers 0 through 6 and set the other numbers aside. We had...
I was treated like a star on Mother’s Day. The kids brought me breakfast in bed complete with homemade cards and crafts. I looked like a queen with the bright yellow crown DD made for me! Later in the day, hubby rounded up all the nuts, bolts and parts and put together my favorite swing — a Mother’s Day Gift three years ago! (We disassembled it to bring it back...
I was so excited to find this website — enature.com. It lets you listen to the sounds made by frogs and toads. Since we have a symphony of frog calls at night it’s pretty neat knowing which one’s which! Here are the frogs and toads we’ve come across (in the hundreds) here in our neck of the woods: Pickerel Frog: Fowler’s Toad: Northern Cricket Frog: Cope’s Gray Treefrog:
The past week we had a wonderful time with our friends. We took them on a short hike through the woods and spent a lot of time looking for frogs and things. LD couldn’t get enough time down at the creek and spent a couple hours each afternoon hunting things down. We found a bunch of new (to us) critters! How exciting! I think this little guy is a Northern...
You can never go wrong with paper plates, paint and glitter, right?!! The kids chose these paper bag puppet designs from DLTK’s Paper Bag Puppet ideas page. They had fun making them and tossing them over the banister upstairs to watch them “fly” to see whose traveled farthest! LD chose to do the Phoenix because of the book series he’s reading called Beast Quest. He’s so into these books he...
DD has enjoyed math so far this week. In addition to a bit of work in her math workbook each day — here are some things we did together: Place Value: She is finding the numbers 500 90 and 7 and stacking them on top of each other (bottom left of pic) to make 597. These plastic place value cards are from our Right Start Math curriculum, but can be...
Here are a few things in ED’s workboxes as we get back into the swing of things. Using tweezers to sort colored pom-poms (I have a sticker with the appropriate color for each section.) Placing erasers on the end of a pencil. Since ED is past dropping things through a hole, this is a good skill for her — both lining up the hole in the eraser and having to...
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.
