Making Homeschooling Hands-On, Engaging, Meaningful & Memorable! Be inspired by all the possibilities!! Check out our unit studies, packets and printables!
Homeschool: Planning and Preparation / How to Start Homeschooling / Starting to Homeschool
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published August 4, 2014 · Last modified March 18, 2016
When parents are thinking about homeschooling, they want to know exactly “how to start.” That’s such a huge question I’ve actually written a book… or rather, most of a book. It’s about 200 pages and I’m still not quite done! But I still want to write a shorter blog post to help those parents wondering what to do to get started homeschooling. First things first, make sure you find out...
Homeschool: Organizing and Cleaning / Homeschool: Planning and Preparation / How to Start Homeschooling / Starting to Homeschool
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published August 1, 2014 · Last modified August 2, 2015
The back to school sales are starting up where we live… and across the other side of the country, the kids’ cousins are back in the classroom next week. With that in mind, I thought it was time to share our homeschool shopping list. We try to top up on various supplies while the back-to-school sales are on. Here are some of the things that we use in our...
Homeschool Den / How to Start Homeschooling / Starting to Homeschool
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published July 31, 2014 · Last modified April 10, 2015
This is the question our family gets asked most often… or some variation of it… Will you homeschool through high school? How will you teach the tough subjects like calculus? My son will be entering 6th grade this year… In our area he would be entering middle school. DD is a 4th grader and ED will be in 1st grade. (You know, we’re homeschoolers so really they do work on...
Homeschool Den / How to Start Homeschooling / Starting to Homeschool
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published July 30, 2014 · Last modified June 26, 2015
As I start off this series, I realize there might be some readers who are fairly new to our blog. I thought I’d share how we got started homeschooling (and blogging about our adventures). Homeschooling was on our radar even before we had kids. My older sister had kids before we did. They decided to homeschool their kids just about the time we had our son, LD. Also, my cousin...
This is one of those recipes that absolutely everyone should have! They are very, very rich… and are melt in your mouth good! In a saucepan, place 1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips 2 oz (squares) chopped unsweetened chocolate 2 tablespoons butter On the LOWEST heat slowly melt the chocolate and butter. Stir constantly. When the chocolate is (mostly) melted remove from heat and add 2 eggs 2/3 cup sugar...
Freebies / Homeschool: Organizing and Cleaning / Homeschool: Planning and Preparation / Must Read
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published July 28, 2014
Behind the scenes, I have been starting to plan out our fall semester. One thing I wanted right away was a calendar packet. I made one last spring and found it really useful. I printed out two copies. One is for our school schedule. I will pencil in our units and trips to see what the semester will look like. The calendar includes various holidays since we’ll be reviewing some...
Homeschool Den / Nature / Outdoor Fun / Summer Activities
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published July 25, 2014 · Last modified December 31, 2014
Rivers, lakes, streams, ponds… we’ve enjoyed them all this summer! The kids had a blast at our friend’s floating dock… They got a real kick out of the fish who would come and nibble on their fingers and toes! The kids have spent lots of time exploring and playing in the creek behind our house and looking out for critters. The tadpoles have turned into little froglets and the skinks...
Elem-Children's Music 1 (6 yr old) / Holiday: Easter / Science / Science Experiments
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published July 23, 2014 · Last modified January 4, 2015
While LD was away at summer camp, the girls did a few egg-tivities of their own. First in preparation for the activity, they made their own pinewood derby cars (just kits that we got from Michaels). Once the paint was dry and the wheels were on, I told them they had a challenge… to create a seatbelt safety system to protect an egg as the car traveled down our...
Arts and Crafts / Summer Activities
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published July 21, 2014 · Last modified June 24, 2015
It’s not summer if we don’t do some tie dying! Most every summer we get one of those kits to make our own tie-dyed shirts. The kids love doing this. We used the Jacquard Tie Dye kit because it had such great reviews. The colors are definitely bright and vibrant. Our entire family aunts, uncles, cousins, kids were able to make shirts using this one kit. We had to buy...
This summer we spent a couple of weeks reading and exploring some of Shakespeare’s famous tales. If you visit your local library you’ll find tons of Shakespeare books in the junior section. I thought I’d highlight some of the ones that we really liked. Bruce Coville (author of the Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher) has retold a number of Shakespeare’s famous works. He incorporates famous lines into his own prose. This...
Arts and Crafts / Summer Activities
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published July 18, 2014 · Last modified February 20, 2016
Here’s another fun craft to keep the kids entertained when it’s blazing hot outside! A couple of years ago the kids’ cousins went to camp and taught DD and LD how to make these pony-bead snakes and lizards. I thought they were so cute I thought I would share the general procedure here. At the bottom, I’ve included a pdf that you can download with these instructions. What do you...
Critical Thinking Activities / Games for Thinking and Learning / Summer Activities
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published July 16, 2014 · Last modified June 24, 2015
I don’t know about you, but there are times when the kids complain about being bored and not having anything to do. We’ve been trying to bring out some board games that don’t get much use during the school year. A couple weeks ago, I wrote about a game called Quarto. Another quick strategy game we’ve been playing this summer is called Quoridor. (affiliate link) The goal of this game is...
Arts and Crafts / Homeschool Den / Summer Activities
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published July 14, 2014 · Last modified June 23, 2015
Here’s a fun indoor activity that takes under 20 minutes. All of my kids and my niece (13) enjoyed making their own stationery. All you need for this activity is shaving cream, tempera paint and a thicker paper. We used medium weight drawing paper. Here are the easy steps: Spray the shaving cream, Add spoonfuls of the desired paint, Mix lightly with a finger or spoon, Press the paper down...
Homeschool Den / Language Arts: Books: Children's Literature
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published July 12, 2014 · Last modified May 19, 2015
Some of you may not know that we lived overseas for many years. In fact, all three kids were born in Central Australia. ED was just young enough when we left that she doesn’t remember very much about Australia any more. We’ll be doing a short unit on Australia when we start back up with school. With the help of one of my Australian friends, we came up with a...
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.
