Homeschool Den

Making Homeschooling Hands-On, Engaging, Meaningful & Memorable! Be inspired by all the possibilities!! Check out our unit studies, packets and printables!

Welcome to the Homeschool Den! Check out our latest packets at Our Store (click here!)! New to our website? Click here! Check out our packets and bundles at these pages: Earth and Physical Science Page; Human Body Systems; Zoology/Animal Units; Biology Units; Chemistry Units; History Units; Multiplication/Division 2s thru 12s ; Spelling Games and Activities; Grammar worksheets

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Kindergarten / Science / Science: Simple Machines Unit

Simple Machines Unit: Wedge Hands-On Activities

The wedge is a pretty easy concept to remember, but we still took the opportunity to have some fun with wedges! We spent some time outside at the wood pile using real wedges to split wood (plus, we got some wood ready for the woodstove!!) This is a tool call a “Smart Splitter.” Even the kids can split wood with it. They simply lifted the weight and dropped it down...

Simple Machines Worksheets 26

Homeschool Den / Kindergarten / Must Read / Science / Science: Simple Machines Unit

Simple Machines Packet (About 30 pages)

I have kids of different ages (5, 8 and 10). We all did this simple machines unit together. It was perfect for my younger two — quite easy for my oldest, but from here we’re going to go on to more complicated topics… inventions and electricity (see our STEM Electricity and Circuits Packet here) which are more suited to my older two.  It works best for our family to do...

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Ear Surgery / Health

Living with Dizziness, Vertigo, and Balance Issues

Have you ever spun around on a swing or something and when you get off you feel dizzy, can’t focus your eyes, feel out of balance and sick to your stomach? That’s what life has been like for me for over a week. It’s a complication of my ear surgery from three weeks ago.  It has made life very tough.  It has been difficult to walk straight. The ceiling and...

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Homeschool: Interviews with other Homeschoolers

Guest Post: Working Outside the Home, Homeschooling Mom

Perspectives from a working (part-time outside the home) homeschooling mom. Since Liesl is still under the weather, here is a guest post from a friend (Disclaimer:  I am in no way as amazing a homeschooler as Liesl.)  I have been homeschooling my kids since they were 4 and 2, they are now 9 and 11.  I have also always worked part time outside the home and I love my profession. ...

Explaining Long Division with Kitty Place Value Cards 7

Freebies / Homeschool Den / Kindergarten Math / Math General Posts / Math--Division

Explaining Long Division with Kitty Place Value Cards

DD is just now moving into long division–by that I mean we’ve done about a half-dozen problems together.  She really didn’t get it at all… so I wanted a more hands on way of showing her what was happening. Last week I made ED some kitty place value cards (haven’t gotten that post done!) for her to work on building numbers into the thousands, but it occurred to me that...

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Science / Science Experiments / Science: Simple Machines Unit

Simple Machines Unit: Hands-On Activities on Levers

We started a unit on Simple Machines several weeks ago.  I thought I’d share the first set of hands on activities we did on levers and the three classes of levers. We started our unit going over the six types of simple machines. Since I have kids of varying levels I made several sheets (matching, tracing and fill in the blanks). In the end, this turned out to be useful...

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Homeschool Den / Language Arts: Writing

Creating a Homeschool Writing Workshop — Post #3 (Mini-Lessons and Useful Resources)

In the first post in this series, I explained how we had dabbled in writing, but had never found a “program” or curriculum that worked well for us.  I found some expert advice from primary classroom teachers, though, and set about creating a workshop that works for our family. I learned about the 6+1 writing traits (the basic qualities that make writing work and include: ideas, organization, word choice, voice, sentence...

What to Do with That Candy? Science Experiments, Donations… 0

Holiday: Halloween / Homeschool Den / Science / Science Experiments

What to Do with That Candy? Science Experiments, Donations…

If you are wondering what to do with all that Halloween candy, you can always do some science! This is an experiment I did with my kids a while back with Skittles in water. I think the results are fascinating: Do you want to do other fun experiments with candy? Be sure to visit this great website, Candy Experiments written by Loralee, a mom of three. She recently wrote a post Candy Experiment Cards...

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Homeschool: Interviews with other Homeschoolers

Guest Post by My Homeschooling Sister: Intensity in Learning

This is a post by my amazing sister, Cynthia. She and her husband homeschool their three kids. My sister works full time and my brother-in-law works part time for the National Guard. They live on a farm in Tennessee and raise chickens and a few ducks.  Here’s a view looking out on their lake from a trip last winter: I’ve written about my sister’s family adventures from time to time...

Find Activities for your Tots or Preschoolers, Search for Different Unit Studies: Categories and Archives Features 0

Homeschool: Random Thoughts

Find Activities for your Tots or Preschoolers, Search for Different Unit Studies: Categories and Archives Features

We have a wonderful tech team here at Parents. You might have noticed that the categories feature of my blog is now back! Hooray! Ever since I started this blog I have been categorizing things into different units.  If you’re doing a study of Ancient Egypt or natural disasters, the human body or the ocean, or just want to look through the dozens and dozens of posts I did when...

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Homeschool Den / Language Arts: Writing

Creating a Homeschool Writing Workshop – Post #2 (Creating a Space)

Getting the Writing Workshop Area Ready One of the things that jumped out for me from all the reading I was doing about writing workshops is that it is important to have a space, routine and materials completely ready to go.  We had always fit in writing pell-mell whenever it fit in to our homeschool day. I wanted there to be a designated space (both physically and mentally) for our...

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Homeschool Den / Language Arts: Writing / Must Read

Creating a Homeschool Writing Workshop – Post #1

For the past six months, I’ve been alluding to the fact that we have really changed the way we approach writing.  Part of me has been wanting to write a post for ages, but I just wasn’t quite sure where to start.  Time to jump in! First, a little background.  LD has always been a reluctant writer. When he was K-1, we worked a lot on handwriting and copywork. We...

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Holiday: Halloween

Halloween Party Games!

Each year, I organize a huge Halloween Party in our community. We have lots and lots of Halloween Party Games for the kids. The kids all have lots of fun!! I wanted to share some of the games that we play at our party. I made a document of all these games and shared them as a free download. You’ll find that at the end. We made a lot of...