Making Homeschooling Hands-On, Engaging, Meaningful & Memorable! Be inspired by all the possibilities!! Check out our unit studies, packets and printables!
Ages 2-6: Bird Unit / Holiday: Easter / Science / Science Experiments
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published April 12, 2014 · Last modified January 26, 2017
EggSperiment 1: Why do eggs move the way they do? Have the kids roll an egg around on a table. Talk about why they are shaped the way they are. Because eggs are a funny and oblong shape, they roll and wobble around in a certain way. Eggs wobble when they roll so they won’t go far from a mother hen and they will stay inside of a nest. If eggs...
Ages 2-6: Bird Unit / Ages 2-6: Preschool (Age 4) / Ages 2-6: Preschool and Toddler Activities / Homeschool Den / Science Experiments
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published April 11, 2014 · Last modified January 26, 2017
EggSpect the UnEggSpected with this series of fun Science EggSperiments! In this series you’ll find a dozen terrific egg activities to do with you kids. So… for the first EggSperiment… Because Easter is coming up, we devoted the past week to some fun science EggSperiments. This experiments requires you to soak a raw egg for two days in vinegar, so I’ll share this experiment first so you have time to...
Homeschool Den / Math - Percents Fractions and Decimals / Math General Posts / Math--Fractions
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published April 10, 2014 · Last modified May 19, 2018
My son is starting a unit on percents. Below you’ll find some of the free resources I used with him as we dove into this unit. I explained that percent means “per hundred” or “of a hundred.” We started with these free sheets from worksheet fun that have some of the blocks in a hundred squared shaded in. It was easy to see that 84% was 84 of a hundred…...
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) / 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 / Montessori (general info)
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published April 8, 2014 · Last modified March 18, 2018
There are so many fun things you can do with your preschooler (or elementary kids) to help them gain an understanding of the geography of our amazing world! You can make all kinds of maps to enhance your preschooler’s knowledge of the world. Over the years we have made maps… with sand, dirt and grass seed like our Nile River Valley Out of clay, like our Ancient Greece (and Mediterranean...
There are lots of free Springtime and Easter Units out on the web with activities for tots, PreK, K and beyond. I thought I would highlight a few freebies I have come across: 3 Dinosaurs has a Free Easter Pack Easter Pre-K Pack from Over the Moon There are tons of great printables for ages 2-6 over at a Gift of Curiosity: Easter Printable Pack Our Little Monkeys has an free Easter...
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published April 5, 2014 · Last modified April 25, 2016
I’ve been trying to get some planning and printing done this afternoon for our homeschool next week. We’re going to add some critical thinking activities back into our schedule and I often pull out Sudoku puzzles for the kids to work on while I’m gathering materials (that down time while I’m trying to get my act together!). The kids LOVE these puzzles. Krazy Dad has hundreds and hundreds of Sudoku...
Kindergarten / Language Arts - Grammar Worksheets
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published April 4, 2014
We should really call this post “Going Crazy with a Stapler!” So, the picture below is the skip-counting chain ED did (free to download at the Coins, Coins, Coins post), but shows you what we did with the strips in this post! Going along with the “chain” theme that I talked about on Tuesday with the coins and skip counting, I made ED sheets she had to cut out, mix...
Kindergarten Math / Math General Posts / Math-Money
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published April 3, 2014 · Last modified March 9, 2016
ED has been working on coins for math. To be honest, sometimes things just don’t get accomplished unless I’ve taken some time before-hand to get things ready. Here are some activities I got together for her. I grabbed our coin bowl and made pre-made ziploc bags of coins for her to match. There is one extra card for each packet. I placed five small ziploc bags with pre-counted amounts of coins...
I’ve been thinking and planning out the next six weeks of our homeschool… We have some things that we really need to address like spelling and grammar. Since the kids ADORE math circle time (see this post here) (which is basically critical thinking and math riddles) we have to add that back in as well. But the big fat blank — the ugly square looking me (and you!) square in the...
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published April 1, 2014 · Last modified September 5, 2022
When we delve into a new unit, I search high and low for a wide variety of books. Not only do I want non-fiction books, but I also want books that bring the topic alive… and stories and novels are a wonderful way to do that. This is a long (and probably incomplete!) list of the books we’ve used and are using in our China unit. We’ve read a number...
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published March 31, 2014 · Last modified March 16, 2023
We started a big unit on China a number weeks ago. This is the first in a whole number of posts & printables from our unit on China. One of the first things we did was to cover some of basic facts about China: where it is located, its population, capital, president, currency and things like that. This is the page I made for the kids. I also included the...
Homeschool Den / Homeschool: Random Thoughts
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published March 28, 2014 · Last modified March 1, 2016
Plato: Knowledge that is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind. One of the things my kids love about homeschooling is that they can spend long, leisurely amounts of time reading. The first thing they do in the morning is pick up a book and start reading while eating breakfast. My goal has always been for reading to be something that you do for pleasure, not for reward. One...
Just over a week ago, I had my fourth ear surgery since October. I was braced for a tough recovery. The surgery was a bit more invasive than the one three weeks ago so it was definitely uncomfortable afterwards. As far as we know the surgery went well. Right now we’re in a long waiting game to see how things settle down. If you have followed my story, you know...
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.
