Making Homeschooling Hands-On, Engaging, Meaningful & Memorable! Be inspired by all the possibilities!! Check out our unit studies, packets and printables!
Freebies / Homeschool Den / Homeschool: Planning and Preparation / How to Start Homeschooling / Starting to Homeschool
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published July 16, 2020 · Last modified August 10, 2023
Tips for How to Start Homeschooling! I field a LOT of email from readers looking for advice on how to start homeschooling. I wanted to give some tips and pointers from someone who has been homeschooling for a very long time! 🙂 We have been homeschooling right from the start and my kids decided to continue homeschooling right through high school! Are you starting to homeschool or need fresh inspiration?...
Ages 2-6: Preschool and Toddler Activities / Homeschool Den / Kindergarten
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published May 31, 2019 · Last modified June 17, 2020
This past week I’ve had a couple of emails from readers who will be homeschooling Kindergarten or Grade 1 for the first time. It’s hard to know where to start, right?! There are lots of possibilities and picking a starting point can be overwhelming! I hope this post will give you some ideas and inspiration for a wonderful homeschool year ahead! For us, homeschooling was not a big change from...
Homeschool Den / Homeschool: Planning and Preparation / How to Start Homeschooling / Starting to Homeschool
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published July 29, 2015 · Last modified July 30, 2015
We’re definitely still in summer mode here… with swimming, camps, play dates, gardening… and an upcoming language immersion camp, but that doesn’t mean that homeschooling isn’t on my mind!! So here are the 10 steps we take to get ready for homeschooling: 1) Send in the official paperwork — the Notice of Intent to Homeschool (if your state require this). Half of my friends have sent theirs in… the other...
History and World Cultures Units / Homeschool: Planning and Preparation / How to Start Homeschooling / Starting to Homeschool
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published June 4, 2015 · Last modified May 6, 2023
Today I’m sharing the history checklist, not only of some of the basic units I hope we cover K-8, but also of some of the historical skills I want the kids to start to master and some of the activities that can make history really come alive for them. In the early years, it’s easy to make history fun with hands-on projects… We have grown the Nile River Valley and made...
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published January 17, 2015 · Last modified July 6, 2020
If you’re looking for the answers to your homeschool questions, the new tab at the top of the page, “Starting to Homeschool” is the place to start!! It has links to dozens and dozens of posts: How to find a homeschool curriculum? What about socialization? How do I know what to teach the kids? What does a homeschool day look like? How do I start homeschooling my preschooler? How many...
How to Start Homeschooling / Starting to Homeschool
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published October 18, 2014 · Last modified July 11, 2020
Please click through to this post (which has working links to the topics mentioned below): How to Start Homeschooling and visit this newer post as well: How Do I Start to Homeschool?! Help! These posts all exist, but we’ve moved from Parents.com (we were under the Parents umbrella for 3 years)… and I don’t have the links up and running! 🙂 Hope to get them together sometime soon! You can...
History: Geography Activities / How to Start Homeschooling / Starting to Homeschool
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published August 12, 2014 · Last modified September 22, 2023
There are so many fun things you can do with your kids to help them gain an understanding of the geography of our amazing world! Here are some of the geography activities we use in our homeschool. 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 Sea) map (Ancient Greece Geography Project, Ancient Greece...
Ages 2-6: Preschool (Age 4) / Homeschool Den / Homeschool: Planning and Preparation / How to Start Homeschooling / Kindergarten Math / Math General Posts / Starting to Homeschool
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published August 6, 2014 · Last modified March 10, 2016
In this series, I thought I’d try to offer new homeschoolers a starting point for finding homeschool curriculums that works for your family. Today I’ll be talking about math. It’s sometimes tricky to find the curriculum that works well for you and your kids. It’s helpful to ask around (online and in your community) to see what will work for your child. If you can go to a homeschool curriculum...
Homeschool Den / Homeschool: Planning and Preparation / How to Start Homeschooling / Must Read / Starting to Homeschool
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published August 5, 2014 · Last modified March 17, 2016
I’ve been asked fairly regularly, “How do you know what to teach the kids?” That is definitely a daunting task, especially if you are pulling your child out of public/private school mid-year. Homeschool does not have to look like traditional school and there’s no rule saying that learning has to come from books or a certain set of books. There are a lot of homeschool curriculum options out there… and...
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 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...
Homeschool: Planning and Preparation
by Liesl - Homeschool Den · Published June 9, 2014 · Last modified June 18, 2020
The end of the school year is coming up quickly. I usually take some time to reflect how the year went for our family. We’ll talk about some of the things we covered this year… everything from really diving into the Writing Workshop for the first time to our huge units on India, Gandhi, the Civil Rights Movement and China… plus our science units on Simple Machines, Weather, Water… our adventures...
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...
Homeschool Den / Homeschool Encouragement / 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 5, 2013 · Last modified March 16, 2016
At some point soon I’ll be sharing some of my plans and the curriculum choices for this next fall. But before I do that, I really wanted to write a post with advice to new homeschoolers. I want to stress how different each and every homeschool family is! So without further ado, here’s some of my thoughts about homeschooling for those who are new to the adventure: *In many states,...
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.
