Making Homeschooling Hands-On, Engaging, Meaningful & Memorable! Be inspired by all the possibilities!! Check out our unit studies, packets and printables!
Homeschool Den / Language Arts: Writing
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published February 27, 2015 · Last modified February 26, 2015
How are we introducing note taking and research skills into our homeschool? One skill that middle and high school students (and beyond!) need is the ability to take notes–either by picking out important key points from books and resources they read or from listening to a speaker or lecturer. In the elementary years, I’ve slowly been trying to help the kids build these skills. I wanted to write this post...
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published February 17, 2015 · Last modified August 31, 2020
Preschool at Home: Engaging Activities for Little Learners ages 3-6 or so When my kids were little, we were very active. We were much more likely to be found jumping and feeling, searching and exploring than sitting quietly doing worksheets. I tried to bring in a wide variety of activities to keep the looking forward to “doing school!” Theme Tables: We often did themed weeks… which helped me rotate in...
Homeschool Den / Uncategorized
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published December 27, 2014 · Last modified January 13, 2015
Hi Everyone! We are working hard to transfer all our materials from our Parents.com location to our new location here! Please bear with us as we work to get the site up and running. Our appearance will change considerably over the coming days and weeks. We hope to start posting officially here around the first week of January; of course, feel free to browse around through all of our older...
Homeschool Den / Science: Chemistry Unit
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published October 5, 2014 · Last modified March 19, 2023
Are you working on chemistry this year? I thought I’d share some of the activities we did when we learned about the States of Matter. I also link to a number of other posts from our chemistry unit. We’ve been having a blast with chemistry — well not literally, but sure have been learning a lot! Today we did most of the hands on activities suggested by the wonderful, wonderful...
Last week, we took the kids to Baltimore for my post-op appointment at Johns Hopkins. We were able to stay right next door at the McElderry House, small business that provides affordable lodging for families of Hopkins patients in the neighborhoods adjacent to the East Baltimore hospital complex. Everything checked out fine, the stitches that completely block off my ear were removed and the implant in my skull for the...
A number of years ago, we had a subscription to Discovery Education Streaming Plus. We loved it. Not only does it include videos and video clips on practically any science or history topic you can imagine, it also offers shows such as The Magic School Bus Animated Hero Classics Liberty’s Kids Tutenstein Grossology Horrible Histories Time Warp Trio Reading Rainbow Greatest Discoveries with Bill Nye Journals through Histories Myth Busters...
Ages 2-6: Preschool (Age 4) / Ages 2-6: Preschool and Toddler Activities / Ages 2-6: Preschool at Home / Ages 2-6: Preschool for ED - Fall 2011 (age 3 1/2) / History: Geography Activities / Homeschool Den
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published April 9, 2014 · Last modified March 3, 2016
Yesterday, I shared a lot of activities that you can do with maps. Today I want to share some other geography activities that my kids loved. After reading through Me on the Map (which is just perfect for the 4-6 year old crowd), I had ED do an activity that focuses in on where we live. You have the kids color in and paste their location, pinpointing their location by going from...
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...
Ages 2-6: Preschool (Age 4) / Ages 2-6: Preschool and Toddler Activities / Ages 2-6: Preschool for ED - Fall 2011 (age 3 1/2) / Freebies / Homeschool Den / Montessori (general info) / Science: Vertebrates - Invertebrates
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published March 5, 2014 · Last modified July 3, 2020
It is animal week for my youngest daughter. We’ve been touching on vertebrates and invertebrates since the kids were little, but I wanted to go back and make sure ED really knew the characteristics of these groups and how animals are classified. First, we went over the difference between Vertebrates and Invertebrates again. We brought out our model frog skeleton again for a closer look! Then she went over the...
Engineering - STEM Activities / Homeschool Den / Science / Science Experiments
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published February 10, 2014 · Last modified April 29, 2017
There is an amazing engineering curriculum that is put out by the Museum of Science, Boston. It’s called Engineering is Elementary. My friend first told me about their hands-on curriculum units and we actually have two of their units lined up for the next month or two. Why study engineering? Their website explains it this way: Hands-on, project-based learning is the essence of engineering. As groups of students work together...
Freebies / Kindergarten Math / Math General Posts / Math--Multiplication / Must Read
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published January 23, 2014 · Last modified January 5, 2020
I made another set of skip counting pages for my daughter. She’s working a lot with the 5s (because she is also working on telling time by 5 minute intervals) so there are a couple of extra pages of those. The packet is 9 pages total. These are free to download if your child (or student) can use them! Just please link back to this page if you want to...
Ages 2-6: Preschool (Age 4) / Ages 2-6: Preschool and Toddler Activities / Ages 2-6: Preschool for ED - Fall 2011 (age 3 1/2) / Ages 2-6: Toddler/Preschool Activities / Science / Science: Vertebrates - Invertebrates
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published January 4, 2014 · Last modified October 26, 2018
Today I have some free Montessori-style Living and Non-Living Sort Cards for you! 🙂 Use these cards to sort into living and non-living groups. Behind the scenes I’ve been getting things ready for our upcoming science units. ED will be doing a bit of animal classification review and I made some new cards for her. I realized, though, that if any of my readers have younger kids in the 2-4...
Homeschool Den / Homeschool: Our Homeschool (what our day is like, curriculum choices, etc.) / Homeschool: Random Thoughts
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published October 11, 2013
I love homeschooling — and I love writing about what we’re doing, but life is taking over for a little while. We have family coming from all over the US (and from Brazil) for my husband’s great uncle’s birthday party. He’s turning 90 and we are hosting several families (they started arriving earlier this week). Then tomorrow we will have 50 or 60 people over to our house. It’s been...
Freebies / Homeschool Den / Kindergarten / Montessori (general info) / Nature / Science / Science: Earth Science Unit
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published September 20, 2013 · Last modified March 3, 2016
This week ED and I read two books together: What Makes Day and Night (affiliate link) and Totally Amazing Night Animals. (affiliate links.) She really enjoyed both of them and we added in some activities to go with these books. After we read through What Makes Day and Night (affiliate link), we spent a lot of time in the dark bathroom! First I held the flashlight and shined it at her as she...
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.
