Welcome Email #3

We have hundreds of resources on our blog. Many of them are free!

Hi!

Again, I’m so happy you joined our newsletter!

I’ve been blogging and writing about our homeschool life for many years now!  I love what I do!  It has allowed me to “meet” homeschoolers (just like you!!) from all around the world!  I’ve become friends and gotten to know educators from the US, Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand, all over Europe, India, China, Uganda, Kenya, South Africa and elsewhere!  (P.S. I love hearing from you!! Where are you from?!  Did you know that my kids were all born in central Australia… where we lived for 12 years?! We live in the woods in Virginia now. You can always email me with questions or just to say HI and to tell me about your homeschool journey!)  I feel so grateful to have connected with so many amazing people all around the world!

Along the way, I spent several years blogging under the Parents.com umbrella. (That’s the crazy reason all my links are GREEN!! I don’t know how to fix that on the back end even though my website left Parents years ago!) At the time, I had to blog 3-5 times a week… so now after many years I have over 2750 posts!  As you can imagine, there are hundreds of resources tucked away on the blog.

You will find our paid packets/units are in our store area.  These are the resources I have spent a lot of time on. For example, our ocean packet took 9 months of research… and I was in contact with a biologist (in oceanography) as I built out that packet!  Or another example… our Earth Science Packet has undergone 17 updates since I first released it! Similarly, the Animal Packet has undergone countless updates.  I keep adding to and expanding out packets as we come back to them! And as I get requests. 🙂

On that note, our packets are suitable for homeschool families because we did science and history together through the end of middle school. I have three kids, each two years apart so our packets include material for a range of ages.

If you still have questions about what packets we used at what age, be sure to check out our free Homeschool Resource Guides: Creating Your Own Homeschool Curriculum. Those are listed in Welcome Email #2 or here are quick links (Kindergarten – Grade 1 (ages 5-7); Grades 2-3 (ages 7-9); Curriculum Grade 4-5 (ages 9-11); Grades 6-8 (ages 11-14); Grades 9-12 (ages 14-18). These will give you an idea of the kids of topics/units and activities we did along the way and may have some ideas to inspire you. 😊

There are lots of other resources & printables on the blog that are just free to download.  They might be useful, but just small 3-10 page worksheets, games, activities or other resources I wanted to share with my wonderful community.  🙂

Our free resources take more work to find, though. They aren’t listed in the store area. For example, we have dozens and dozens of free grammar pages from Comma Rules Practice Pages and a Free Apostrophe Worksheet to Their, They’re, There – Its, It’s Free Practice Sheets … and more!

Today, I wanted to send this email sharing a few links with you. But also remember you can use the SEARCH box on the left sidebar of my blog to see if we’ve covered it and what we did on that particular topic.  For example, if you are doing a unit on Pete the Cat ,the samurai or Roman Numerals or if your kids love Minecraft, you can find those using the SEARCH box.

Other Homeschool FREEBIES

As you can imagine, our free resources get a lot of downloads.  For example, this Nature Scavenger Hunt Free Download had 55,000 downloads… and that was when I left Parents.com back years ago! But, that’s a fun one to do with preschoolers and kids in early elementary. We did this every year for years when the kids were little!

Our Free Yearly Calendar is also pretty popular.  I update it every year and it includes the major holidays and things like that.  I do it for myself, but each year it gets thousands of downloads!  For example, recently it has been getting about 500 downloads a week! Anyway, here’s the free 2023-2024 Calendar Printable. (Hopefully, I remember to come back to update this page when the next one becomes available!!)

But we also have free history, geography, science and other resources tucked away on the blog. Such as this popular Free Nature Scavenger Hunt PrintableNative American: Plains Wars PacketFree China Geography & Landmarks Packet,  this Free Chemistry Experiment Packet for ages 7-8 or so), Free Montessori Addition PagesFree Skip Counting Pages (other free skip-counting mazes: fall theme skip counting, holiday theme, spring theme skip counting activities), Free Math Game Board , Fall & Halloween Freebies, FREE Famous Americans PacketTypes of Scientists Worksheets;

Christmas Freebies, Free German worksheets for kidsFree Bohr Diagram Worksheets , Free Egg-Experim ent Packet!, Free Civil Rights Movement Lessons, Key Events of the Civil Rights Movement (free activity), Samurai Notebook Pages (free) , free notebook pages about Stonehenge, Marco Polo, Ancient China, Confucius, Gandhi, the Solar System and for younger kids… Free Bob Book Worksheets, Free Bob Book Worksheets, FREE Horse and Barn File Folder Game (2 letter word) , Sh Ch Th Word Sort Activity (Free), Modern Art Packet , Free Music Composer Resources, Free Beginners Music Curriculum and SO SO many others!

This is another good post to check out:

And during the school year, be sure to check the blog itself regularly.  I often share weekly freebies… or just throw things up when my kids need review. Here’s just a small sampling of math freebies

Foreign Language Freebies:

I learned German in high school and college, so that was the only foreign language I felt comfortable teaching my kids. The kids started learning German when they were in early elementary. At the time, I had a hard time finding fun worksheets and games for them.  You can check out these two post where you’ll find some of our German Freebies. You can also check out our German Store for some of the packet bundles I sell.

Sometimes wild things happen along this homeschooling journey! Here is the funny story of how I got to know Sra. Morato in this post but the upshot is that Sra. Morato and I became friends.  She started building an elementary Spanish program for homeschoolers and my girls joined her class.  Sra. Morato and I teamed up to make a number of Spanish Freebies that we shared with the homeschool community.  Here are a couple of those:

You can also check out her online elementary Spanish program (Sra. Morato is a native Spanish speaker with 20 years of experience teaching Spanish! She got her Master’s in online teaching. She taught for many years in the public schools, but now homeschools her kids.). Sra. Morato is *amazing* and has taught my girls to speak Spanish!  I can’t rave about her classes enough!

For those of you who speak Spanish and are just interested in the worksheet sets, you can check out the Spanish store.

So, as you can see there are a lot of resources on the blog! I hope you’ve found at least a few things that will help your family!

Take care and I will talk to you again tomorrow! The 4th of 5 emails in this series.

Happy Homeschooling!
~Liesl

Here are a few pictures of some of the freebies listed above:

Free Nature Scavenger Hunt Printable

NatureScavengerHunt2

Free Bug-Themed Tracing and Matching Pages – This post has lots of fun bug-themed activities ED did in this unit!

Bug Tracing Matching Pages

Free Living and Non-Living Montessori Cards and Activities
Free Living and Nonliving Cards Worksheets and Activities

Types of Scientists Worksheets
Types of Scientists - Job - Career Worksheets

Samurai Notebook Pages
samurai worksheets
Free Skip Counting Mazes

My kids loved doing these types of skip counting mazes as they were beginning to learn their multiplication and division facts! I made tons of games and activities for them which you’ll find in our Multiplication/Division BUNDLE.
Skip Counting Worksheets 2s 3s 4s 5s 10s

3s Multiplication Worksheets – Fall FREEBIE!
3s Multiplication Worksheet FALL FREEBIE

Free Math Game Board – Multiplication/Division Fact Version

FREE Math Game Board - Multiplication Division

FREE Famous Americans Packet
Famous American Activity Pages - Biographical Sketches

Writing Practice Exercises: Show, Don’t Tell Packetshow-dont-tell-writing-worksheets
High School Math Posters (Free Quadratic Equation Printables)

Quadratic Function - Quadratic Equations - Quadratic Formula - FREE PrintablesFree Solar System Packet

Free Planet Worksheets - Solar System UnitFree Astronomy Packet (Middle School)

Astronomy Packet

That’s about it for now!

Once again, Happy Homeschooling!

~Liesl

Here are the links in the Welcome Letter Series again:

Welcome Email #1

Welcome Email #2

Welcome Email #4

Welcome Email #5