Making Homeschooling Hands-On, Engaging, Meaningful & Memorable! Be inspired by all the possibilities!! Check out our unit studies, packets and printables!
Homeschool Encouragement / Homeschool: Our Homeschool (what our day is like, curriculum choices, etc.) / Homeschool: Planning and Preparation / Homeschool: Random Thoughts
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published January 18, 2014 · Last modified April 30, 2016
Someone recently asked me how to get started homeschooling. She was interested in creating some unit studies for her kids and wanted to know where to start. Since I tend to create our history and science units myself, I thought I’d try to share how I pull our units together. I’ve written a lot of related posts about homeschooling things like planning, preparation, assessing our long term and short term...
Freebies / History: Civics, Government and Economics / History: Civil Rights Movement / Homeschool Den
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published January 10, 2014 · Last modified March 3, 2016
Yesterday I shared the Civil Rights books we’ll be using in our Civil Rights Movement unit. Before we go into a lot of depth about the events of the 1950s and 1960s, I wanted to make sure the kids really understood some of the history leading up to this period. I created a photo timeline of events to help my kids review (and/or understand) the events leading to the Civil...
History: Civil Rights Movement / Homeschool Den
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published January 9, 2014 · Last modified September 28, 2020
This semester we are doing a unit on the Civil Rights Movement. I came up with a long list of books that we can read with this unit. Most of them I found at our local library. I thought I would share the list I compiled in case someone else might find it useful: Civil Rights Movement Books you may want to read with your students: Elementary (these are...
Ages 2-6: Preschool (Age 4) / Ages 2-6: Preschool and Toddler Activities / Ages 2-6: Preschool for ED - Fall 2011 (age 3 1/2) / Ages 2-6: Toddler/Preschool Activities / Science / Science: Vertebrates - Invertebrates
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published January 4, 2014 · Last modified October 26, 2018
Today I have some free Montessori-style Living and Non-Living Sort Cards for you! 🙂 Use these cards to sort into living and non-living groups. Behind the scenes I’ve been getting things ready for our upcoming science units. ED will be doing a bit of animal classification review and I made some new cards for her. I realized, though, that if any of my readers have younger kids in the 2-4...
History: India Unit / Homeschool Den / Must Read
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published December 20, 2013 · Last modified March 12, 2016
This week we finished up our studies of India with a close look at Gandhi, his life and contributions. We read a number of children’s books and biographies and watched highlights from the well-known movie, Gandhi. There are a few parts of the movie that (in my opinion) are too rough for younger kids, but some of the scenes (the Indian country-side, the marches) were amazing! The movie is SO...
History: India Unit / Homeschool Den / Homeschool: Our Homeschool (what our day is like, curriculum choices, etc.) / Math General Posts / Must Read
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published December 12, 2013 · Last modified March 12, 2016
Tis the season to be flexible! Some days we get quite a bit done, other days… not so much. I try to keep myself calm about that. Yesterday, for example, all our friends had a snow day. Often time we do school anyway, but the appeal of sledding and playing outside with friends won over! Today, we were back to the normal homeschool schedule. Here are some of the things...
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...
Science / Science: Earth Science Unit
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published October 15, 2013 · Last modified July 19, 2018
Are you looking for hands-on Earth Science activities? This is a collection of some our favorite activities from our unit. Layers of the Earth Activities: I first saw this activity last year at The Learning Ark. It fit in perfectly with our Earth Science unit. There is also a similar activity using a hard-boiled egg in the book we are using for this unit, How the Earth Works by Michelle O’Brien-Palmer. One of...
Freebies / History: Geography Activities / History: India Unit / Homeschool Den
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published September 30, 2013 · Last modified April 5, 2016
This year we are again studying world cultures in our homeschool. We are focusing on Asia and just started our unit on India. I made a packet for the kids to add to their history notebooks which covers the geography of India, some basic facts (population, capital, etc.) and things like that. It’s 20 pages long and includes answers to the various sheets that the kids and I will be...
Homeschool Den / Homeschool: Our Homeschool (what our day is like, curriculum choices, etc.) / Homeschool: Random Thoughts / Mom Stories
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published September 25, 2013
So, a couple days ago I wrote a blog post about how are homeschool routine is working out this year. It’s going pretty well and I love being back into a routine. But as for life in general, it’s sometimes hard to juggle everything. Preparing and time with the kids homeschooling takes up a good chunk of my day, as you can imagine. Plus, writing also takes time. But there...
Homeschool Den / Homeschool: Our Homeschool (what our day is like, curriculum choices, etc.)
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published August 20, 2013 · Last modified August 19, 2018
Someone asked what our typical homeschool day looks like. Actually, no day is really ever like another, but I’ll do my best to share the general rhythm of our day… that is, if we’re home all day. Kindergarten Day: ED (now in kindergarten) is still the first one up most days. She and I sit down together to eat at the dining room table and I read her a book...
Homeschool Den / Homeschool: Our Homeschool (what our day is like, curriculum choices, etc.) / Homeschool: Planning and Preparation / Kindergarten
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published August 9, 2013 · Last modified December 12, 2016
I had to submit our Notice of Intent to Homeschool and even though I don’t have to go into much detail about our curriculum, I use that as my deadline for roughly mapping out the school year. The kids are in Grades 5, 3 and Kindergarten this year. I pulled out some (but not all) of the resources we’ll be using for a quick photo: Here are some of the...
Freebies / Homeschool Den / Homeschool: Organizing and Cleaning / Homeschool: Our Homeschool (what our day is like, curriculum choices, etc.) / Homeschool: Planning and Preparation / Homeschool: Useful Resources (websites books etc)
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published August 7, 2013 · Last modified December 31, 2014
Not too long ago the categories section of my blog was disabled. I’m trying to get that up and running, but in the meantime I wanted to be sure people could cruise through the various topics we’ve done while planning for the fall. I’m sure homeschoolers all around the country are gearing up for the new school year! Update: We have just moved to homeschoolden.com… I have not yet provided the...
Homeschool Den / Homeschool: Our Homeschool (what our day is like, curriculum choices, etc.) / Homeschool: Planning and Preparation / Must Read
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published June 19, 2013 · Last modified May 16, 2016
This is such a fun post to write! This is where I get to reminisce and think about the amazing year we’ve had. It has been a blast… tiring at times (particularly in February when LD had a lot of out-of-town gymnastics meets, I had lots of meetings and was training for a half-marathon). But looking back, we had a fulfilling, successful year. We do a lot of our activities...
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.
