Making Homeschooling Hands-On, Engaging, Meaningful & Memorable! Be inspired by all the possibilities!! Check out our unit studies, packets and printables!
Homeschool Den / Homeschool Encouragement / Homeschool: Organizing and Cleaning / Homeschool: Planning and Preparation / Homeschool: Random Thoughts / Homeschool: Useful Resources (websites books etc) / How to Start Homeschooling / Starting to Homeschool
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published July 11, 2016 · Last modified July 7, 2020
For many of us it is mid-summer. Homeschooling seems far away still, though we know it’s lurking around the corner. We don’t want to be caught completely unprepared, right? Here are some things that we can do now to make the transition easier when we return: 1) Turn in your Notice of Intent (if your state requires one) – Get this done and turned in so you don’t have to...
Homeschool Den / Summer Activities
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published June 13, 2016 · Last modified May 16, 2016
Here are some fun summer activities you might enjoy doing with your kids this summer! A Huge List of Summer Activity Ideas! Nature Scavenger Hunt: Send your kids outside to complete this scavenger hunt! This printable is free! 🙂We also have a photo hunt: Have them take photos of the things on the list:Set up an Outdoor Treasure Hunt with QR Codes! Kids use the QR code reader to find...
Homeschool Den / Summer Activities
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published May 25, 2016 · Last modified June 27, 2016
Today I have a free USA Road Trip Travel Log for you!! Hopefully, this will help you keep your kids entertained if you plan to travel a lot this summer. Plus, I’ll share some of the travel activities to make the car trip more fun!! So first, about the printables: I made this Travel Book for the kids for our huge trip out West this summer. It’s about 40 pages,...
Free Calendar Planning Pages / Homeschool Den / Homeschool: Random Thoughts / Language Arts: Writing
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published May 15, 2016 · Last modified May 16, 2016
Hi Everyone, This is going to be a bit of a random post so bear with me! I’m going to talk about 3 separate things in this post. 1) Our free calendar printable and homeschool planning pages 2) A free end of year questionnaire for students and parents and 3) a random chat about our Homeschool Writing Workshop. Free Calendar, Homeschool Planning Pages and Homeschool Supply List: First, as many...
Before I dive too much into our school posts, I wanted to share pictures from our last week of summer vacation. Back in the spring, we made camping reservations at the Blackwood Campground in Acadia National Park. We drove up to Maine and spent a week enjoying the beauty of that area! We did a lot of hiking! And the kids and Hubby even braved the cold ocean waters! We...
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published June 29, 2015 · Last modified April 10, 2016
This game is great for keeping the kids active inside when it’s very hot outside!! When I was a kid, I remember playing skip ball a lot. We were shopping at Target about a month ago and did a total impulse buy!! I’m so glad we did. We’ve all been using it daily since … meaning… it’s always lying in the middle of the living room. 🙂 But our family...
This summer I won’t be posting quite as often, but I will try to post most Mondays (at a minimum)… and will keep FB going once or twice a day with some of our older posts. In the meantime, I’ll be working on other projects to get ready for the fall. I’m working on a couple of cute math packets (addition/subtraction and multiplication), a packet on mammals, an ocean unit...
Yesterday was the first official day of summer! I hope your summer is going well so far!! One of the first things we did when we moved here close to five years ago was to plant a blueberry garden. We chose a very steep (difficult to mow) hill, took out all of the grass, and created two tiers. I remember ED (age 2 at the time) coming out to “help”...
Engineering - STEM Activities / Engineering Challenges
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published June 6, 2015 · Last modified March 5, 2019
My kids love hands-on projects and engineering activities are always a hit! Here are some quick activities you could suggest to the kids with materials you probably have on hand. Last January we started our Earth Science Unit off with some engineering activities. We talked a lot about building structure, stability, and things like that. These activities were so fun, they really don’t need to be connected to a study...
Arts and Crafts / Homeschool: Planning and Preparation / Homeschool: Random Thoughts / Homeschool: Useful Resources (websites books etc) / Summer Activities
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published June 1, 2015 · Last modified April 23, 2021
I typed up a list of more than 350 activities, projects, trip ideas, and patches the kids can work on this summer. When I handed these pages to the kids you should have seen them pour through the list! Their eyes nearly popped out of their heads, they were so excited! Each of the items on this list have patches that scouts (and others!) can earn. But let’s face it, it’s just...
Homeschool Den / Language Arts: Books: Children's Literature / Summer Activities
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published June 16, 2014 · Last modified January 1, 2016
I was recently asked if we planned to homeschool throughout the summer. We often start back to school a bit earlier in August than our public school friends, but our family has decided that we need most of the summer off… at least from our more formal approach to school. For one thing, the majority of the kids’ friends have “off” during the summer, so we set up more playdates...
History: American History / History: Civics, Government and Economics / History: Geography Activities / Homeschool Den
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published September 12, 2013 · Last modified February 12, 2016
We are planning to focus on World Cultures (India and China) this year, but we haven’t started in on that yet. Instead, we resumed the year with some of the U.S. geography and history activities we were working on last May/June. Since we traveled quite a bit this summer I wanted to reinforce some of that geography. We talked about our trips and the states we visited. We pulled out the...
Kindergarten / Kindergarten Math / Math General Posts
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published August 26, 2013 · Last modified March 10, 2016
We took much of the summer off. We started easing back into a bit of school after our trip to Colorado. We start earlier than others in our area because we take time off and family trips when it suits us. Day One: Over the summer, I continued to skip count by 2s, 5s and 10s when she brushed her teeth. Since we never really covered the concept of odds...
Homeschool Den / Homeschool: Organizing and Cleaning / Nature / Outdoor Fun
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published July 23, 2013
I remember reading once that you are never supposed to write about not blogging. “Boring!” someone said. I still feel the need to apologize or explain the infrequent posts, though! We’re still in summer mode and while I think I’ve more-or-less hammered out our fall semester and have been busy browsing and purchasing books, scoping out cool science experiments and activities, making some worksheets and games for our units, I’ve felt...
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.
