Making Homeschooling Hands-On, Engaging, Meaningful & Memorable! Be inspired by all the possibilities!! Check out our unit studies, packets and printables!
Science / Science: Human Body Unit
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published September 15, 2011 · Last modified February 21, 2022
Last spring we started learning a bit about the human body, but then we stopped as summer activities took over. We have re-started our human body unit. Before I knew I was going to luck into a zillion human body kits (see my post about being lucky!), I bought the Squishy Human Body by Smart Lab. The kids just loved this! We talked about how the skeleton protects all of...
Science / Science Experiments / Science: Garden Science
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published June 8, 2011 · Last modified March 22, 2016
Plants, plants, plants!! That’s still the main focus of our homeschooling life. The kids are enthralled by the growing process this year. The kids tenderly attend to their plots in the garden. We watch each strawberry ripen eagerly. They rush to inspect the blueberries and peas forming! They help bring in the lettuce for our supper each evening.And, they/we are loving the Junior Master Gardener handbook — and are enjoying...
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...
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published April 26, 2011 · Last modified February 3, 2016
Knowing we’d be doing the hamburger plant activity and to get us into the proper mood, we had hamburgers for dinner the night before! This activity came from the instructor’s manual of the Junior Master Gardener program. The next morning we drew pictures of an imaginary hamburger plant. The purpose of this activity was to discuss the origins of many of the ingredients in a hamburger. When you trace things...
Ages 2-6: Preschool (Age 4) / Homeschool: Random Thoughts
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published August 13, 2010
The kids have really enjoyed their summer activities. Just a five minute drive from the house is a really nice gym. LD has been taking gymnastics classes and always glows afterward. “That was SO hard, but SO great,” he tells us! A dance teacher also offers classes at the gym. DD participated in a little dance camp this week. They made all of their props — frog feet, a duck...
Free Calendar Planning Pages / Free Homeschool Planner / Freebies / Homeschool: Useful Resources (websites books etc)
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published March 15, 2024 · Last modified March 30, 2024
Are you looking for a free printable 2024-2025 Calendar that includes holidays, seasons, day light savings, etc.? Be sure to grab our free printable 2024-2025 calendar! Today I wanted to share our (latest) free calendar printable for the 2024-2025 school year. This free calendar printable covers about 18 months (April 2024 through August 2025). I like having a calendar that includes the holidays, the change in seasons, and things like...
Freebies / Homeschool Den / Kindergarten Math / Math: Preschool Math
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published September 8, 2023 · Last modified August 20, 2023
Place Value Practice FREEBIE! Today I have some new place value practice worksheets for you. This place value PDF is free to download, just click on the link or picture below! Place Value Practice Worksheets – FREE PDF Here are some past math freebies you might want to check out: Free Mixed Math Practice Worksheets – Early Elementary FREE Daily Calendar Page – This is a page I made for...
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published June 30, 2023 · Last modified August 3, 2023
Happy Summer! Grab this 5s and 10s Packet while it is FREE!! Today I have a new 30-page math packet to share with you. It is currently free to download! These worksheets focus on skip counting by 5s and 10s and introduce kids to the 5s and 10s multiplication facts. It includes skip counting mazes, skip counting practice sheets and some multiplication worksheets. This packet has also been added to...
All About Homeschooling! / Free Curriculum Resource Guides / Free Homeschool Planner / Freebies / Homeschool Den / Homeschool: Planning and Preparation / How to Start Homeschooling / Starting to Homeschool
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published May 5, 2023 · Last modified August 10, 2023
Hi! I’m Liesl! It is conference season again and I wanted to share our free conference handouts not only with those who are attending/attended this weekend’s conference, but for my audience in general! I hope you find some helpful resources here! If you attended the homeschool conference, you probably noticed that we have a lot of history and science resources as well as other packets for German, Spanish, math (K-2...
Our Language Arts Activities at the Start of the Year I wanted to share some of the things we are doing for language arts in our homeschool as we begin year. For our homeschooling family, we think of language arts as basically four different activities: 1) independent reading, 2) a novel we read together, 3) language arts (literary analysis, grammar, vocab, editing, etc.) and 4) writing. We try to do...
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published July 13, 2022 · Last modified September 13, 2022
I have some new Back to School Writing Activity Pages that are a perfect way to get your kids’ writing juices flowing at the beginning of your homeschool year. These pages have been added to the Writing Resource BUNDLE. I know many of you are not quite ready to start back into homeschooling, but I wanted to make these Writing Pages available sooner than later. 🙂 For younger students there...
Free Calendar Planning Pages / Freebies
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published June 30, 2022 · Last modified December 11, 2022
FREE Printable Homeschool Planner! Today I have shared a new printable Homeschool Planner for the fall semester 2022. This planner is free to download! As many of you know, I have been creating my own planner for years. Sometimes I have used full-sized pages, sometimes I prefer a smaller booklet-style (1/2 page planner). Last year, I started using a planner with full-size pages once again. This particular version has calendar...
This time of year, we often spend some time doing some basic math review. I want to highlight some new Math Review pages I made this year (which are for students in grades 7-9 or so), but I will highlight many of our other FREE math review packets as well. I’ve been making review worksheet sets for years now, so hopefully you will find something that will work for your...
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published February 27, 2022 · Last modified March 30, 2024
Are you looking for a free printable 2023-2024 Calendar that includes holidays, seasons, day light savings, etc.? Be sure to grab our free printable 2023-2024 calendar! UPDATE: Visit this post: Free 2024-2025 Calendar Printable for the latest calendar! I’ve had some requests for access to our next free calendar printable for the 2023-2024 school year. I wanted to share our free calendar printable for NEXT school year 2023-2024. This free...
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.
