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by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published October 1, 2010 · Last modified April 1, 2016
Yesterday, I showed the kids a few pictures of Japanese Zen gardens before we settled in to make our own. We listened to a couple of beautiful Japanese pieces as we worked on our Zen gardens. We used sand and a few objects I had on hand for the kids (rocks, acorns, fake grass, pine cones). We used forks instead of rakes. DD and ED wanted to do it again...
Elem-Children's Music 1 (6 yr old) / History: Japan Unit / Music
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published September 30, 2010 · Last modified April 1, 2016
I have found the glockenspiel to be a wonderful first instrument for LD and DD. (LD has since moved on to the piano.) In our music classes, we are learning the basics of rhythm (quarter notes, eighth notes and the half note at this point). And, I’ve introduced a few notes to the kids. The first song DD learned on the glockenspiel was Bee, Bee Bumble Bee (to the tune...
Sorry for yet another picture, but we’re just thrilled watching the deer! We’re at a timeshare with Grams and Gramps for a few days and have been having a wonderful break. Yesterday we spent all day at an indoor water park. I must have gone up the stairs (about three floors) at least 25 times with LD and DD!! Whew! But there were no lines. How amazing to homeschool and...
This is another Mom-Story I’d like to share with my kids/family/friends (well for the kids, maybe I’ll share this when they’re MUUuuuuch older!). It’s a story about a scary drawing, potential kidnapping (and worse), and the police! Bear with me as I set the scene–it takes a few minutes before I get to the story itself. When I was at university, I studied anthropology. I started out being interested in...
We had fun on our nature walk and found such beautiful things!! We have a full grocery bag of acorns and pine cones for crafts in the coming weeks. The kids have never seen fall leaves (and Daddy and I haven’t seen fall for 14 years or so!) It is so, so amazing to be experiencing autumn again! Gorgeous! And the kids are so excited to see the white-tailed deer...
We’ve had a lot of mosquito larvae in our make-shift frog/toad habitat. We watched a fascinating, informative video about the mosquito’s life cycle here. We didn’t know that the mosquito larvae breathe through a tube at the surface of the water. Also we learned that mosquito eggs can live through the winter and hatch in the spring. Meanwhile, we have about 20-25 tadpoles that have survived in our habitat and...
Arts and Crafts / History: Geography Activities / History: Japan Unit
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published September 23, 2010 · Last modified April 1, 2016
The theme of our music class these next two or three weeks is Japan. Each week we sang the continent song together. This week, we pulled out a new kind of map, a Montessori flag map. We learned where Japan was located and placed the flags we knew on the map. Then everybody piled outside to do a scavenger hunt for Japanese flags. (from Japanese Flag printables) We then looked...
Everyone has amazing stories that make them unique and interesting. I’ve had the itch for a long time to write down some of my stories for the kids. I had this “I can do it” moment on Sunday morning when I realized I could write up a few stories on the blog, collect them in a folder and sometime compile them for the kids. Why the blog? Well, this is...
Piggy bank counting —In this activity, the kids each had their own sets of coins and ‘piggy bank.’ (DD had nickles and pennies; LD had quarters, dimes, nickles and pennies.) LD tossed his coins onto his piggy bank. He got to ‘keep’ the ones that were heads up. He sorted those and got rid of all the ones on ‘tails.” Before counting his coins he had to trade in his...
On Monday we spent several hours out in the woods exploring. The weather is perfect — low humidity and comfortable 70-80 degrees (22-25 C or so). Do you have those — knock your hand against your head moments? Well we suddenly realized why these are called Yellow Poplars! (Below that is a purple maple leaf DD wanted in the picture as well!) There aren’t anywhere near as many mushrooms out...
This week ED and DD are going with a pet theme for some of their activities. Even before I could finish printing things out DD was bursting at the seams to play! This is a pattern matching game from http://kidssoup.com/ (a paid website whose graphics and activity ideas are wonderful and well worth the membership fees for us — ages 2-6 or so — we use it all the time...
It’s been a long time since I mentioned these math gameboards from The School Bell. DD and I have played these addition fact games. Let’s say DD and I were playing on the 5s gameboard. DD drew a 5 card, then she would move her piece to the next 0. On my turn, if I drew a 4, I would move my piece to the next 1 on the board....
Arts and Crafts / History: Geography Activities
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published September 16, 2010 · Last modified April 1, 2016
In our music class we are covering music from different places around the world. Easiest for me was starting with some music from Australia! I talked more about this in another post below. One of the outside activities everyone did this past week was to make their own dot painting. The picture on the left is a dot painting that we bought in central Australia about 10 years ago. It...
Here was a quick math activity for DD. The princess bookmarks were from here. It had been a while since LD did this place value activity, so I added this in to our other activities. I really like the purple paper beads which I printed out from here. I bound 10 sets of 100s with a brad to make a 1000 bead bunch. While we also have actual Montessori beads,...
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.
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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.
