10 Sneaky Ways to Improve Your Child’s Math Skills

Math seems to trigger some ancient fight-or-flight mechanism in some otherwise brilliant children. This irrational fear of math can cause kids who don’t feel good at the subject to avoid doing it, leading to a snowball effect of more avoidance, falling farther behind and feeling more panic about not understanding it (and more avoidance). Luckily, […]

50 Fun Ways for Kids to Get Great at Spelling

All five of our homeschooled kids are now great spellers, but they weren’t always great. They learned in different ways that suited them, but in the end they all ended up becoming excellent spellers — without worksheets, drills or a curriculum. How? It was easier than I thought it would be, once they learned in […]

Math Games Lab for Kids: a Great Book for Hands on Fun

Who needs to stick to a boring old math curriculum? There are some really great books for hands-on math fun. Math Games Lab for Kids: 24 Fun, Hands-On Activities for Learning with Shapes, Puzzles, and Games by Rebecca Rapoport is definitely a fun one to check out with your kiddos. I read an advanced reader […]

Artsology Uses Games to Teach Kids About Famous Art

Have your kids played on Artsology yet? This free site uses a wide range of games and activities to teach kids about famous art and music, from Georgia O’Keefe flower puzzles to Salvado Dali hangman to virtual graffiti tagging and jazz musician name scrambles. This is a site we visited with our older kids years […]

Fun hands on poetry exercises

Poetry Fun: 5 Creative Exercises to Get Kids Writing Poetry (and liking it)

Looking for a fun way to introduce poetry in your homeschool? Also want to sneak spelling, penmanship, vocabulary, antonyms and parts of speech into the play? Here are some creative poetry exercises that will fit the bill. Revised rhymes: Get out a book of nursery rhymes or short poems (try e.e. cummings or Emily Dickinson) […]

Around the Horn Gold Rush Game

Print Out the FREE Around the Horn Game to Learn About the Gold Rush!

Here’s a fun way for kids to learn about the Gold Rush and have some fun family time along with it.  My husband developed the game “Around the Horn” to teach our kids about the Gold Rush and the little-known route that many Americans took out west — by ship.   He explained: When gold […]

Free Curriculum for Homeschooling 7th Grade

Free curricula in every subject for your 7th grader

  Homeschooling in the middle school years doesn’t have to be expensive. There are many outstanding curricula for math, science, history, language arts and more that are absolutely free. Here are some of the best free resources for 7th graders in each subject. Note: This is a tiny fraction of what’s available online for free […]

FREE printable botany plant ID cards

FREE Printable Botany Plant Quiz Cards!

Here’s a great freebie for nature studies and botany lessons.   Go Botany, a fantastic web site that has all kinds of plant identification tools, offers these printable cards.  They say: Practice your identification skills with these handy plant quiz cards! Even when you cannot get outside or sample live plant specimens, you and your […]

Free physics comic books and coloring books

Looking for some great resources to help teach physics? The American Physics Society offers a wealth of great resources for kids of all ages — free. The APS’s PhysicsCentral provides physics-related comic books to read online, along with coloring books, activity guides, podcasts and vodcasts, physics games, book suggestions and more. The comic books, which […]

50 Fabulously fun ways for kids to practice their handwriting

50 Fabulously fun ways for kids to practice their handwriting

Think handwriting practice consists of kids writing C-A-T on oversized stationery lines again and again? Think again! From cake decorating to scratch-n-sniff kool-aid words to feather quills to invisible ink, there are oodles of ways to make handwriting a treat for kids. Here are 50 fun ways kids can practice their printing and cursive handwriting […]

Sing physics and chemistry carols with the kids! (Updated with more songs)

Sing physics and chemistry carols with the kids! (Updated with more songs)

Here’s a great way to combine some seasonal fun with science. Learn some physics and chemistry carols! From “The 12 Days of Newton” to “O Come All Ye Gases” to “I’m Dreaming of a White Precipitate,” there’s all sorts of science fun at these sites. I first shared these in 2011 and one of the […]

Free algebra games, lesson plans and curricula for all ages

Free algebra games, lesson plans and curricula for all ages

Looking for some resources to help teach algebra? There are some really phenomenal ones online, absolutely free. Here are some of the best. (Note that some sites offer multiple types of resources, but are listed in the section of their greatest strengths. For instance, CK-12 is listed under free textbooks but it also provides free […]

Lizard Point offers fabulous geography tools for teachers (FREE)

Lizard Point offers fabulous geography tools for teachers (FREE)

Here’s a wonderful site to help kids learn all kinds of world geography, absolutely free. Lizard Point Quizzes offers interactive geography games that teach everything from countries in Africa to Canadian provinces to geophysical regions of the United States. In addition, they also provide features like merit stamps and give teachers the ability to track […]

Free curricula in every subject for your 3rd grader

Kids can take a quiz to find out which Founding Father they match

Here’s a fun way to help your kids learn more about the Constitution and our Founding Fathers. The National Constitution Center offers this fun quiz: Which Founder are You? The U.S. Constitution was written in 1787 by a group of 55 men with one purpose and many different personalities. Discover which Founding Father you’re most […]

50 fun household materials to use for poetry, spelling and more

50 fun household materials to use for poetry, spelling and more

Looking for some fun ways to play with spelling, poetry and writing in your homeschool? Make some language arts manipulatives! You can find wonderful materials all around the house, absolutely free, and pick up others at dollar stores or thrift stores for next to nothing. Here are some of our favorites. (Instructions follow for those […]

Oodles of amazing educational uses for plastic eggs

Oodles of amazing educational uses for plastic eggs

After Easter, it’s the perfect time to pick up extra plastic eggs on clearance to use them for all sorts of homeschooling fun — and not just for the preschool set. Most of us have seen the Pinterest pins of Easter eggs being used to learn sight words or letters, but you can use them […]

Use printable car maps to help kids learn their states on road trips

Use printable car maps to help kids learn their states on road trips

Here’s a fun way to help kids pass the time on road trips and learn their states at the same time. Print out free car maps and have them color in the states as they spot cars with those state license plates. There are two versions of maps available — a labeled one to help […]

Oodles of fun (free) ways to learn about atoms!

Oodles of fun (free) ways to learn about atoms!

Looking for some fun ways to bring your studies about atoms to life? Luckily, the internet is full of wonderful, hands-on ways for kids to learn about atoms. Here are all sorts of fantastic, hands-on ways to teach kids about atoms. ~ Sing “The Atoms Family” (Click here to see one family singing it together […]

Free printable life-sized child and adult skeletons, skull puzzles and more!

Free printable life-sized child and adult skeletons, skull puzzles and more!

Looking for some hands-on ways to bring your anatomy studies to life? The University of Texas at Austin’s Department of Anthropology has some wonderful freebies to help. The fantastic printables include: A life-sized adult skeleton A life-sized child skeleton in B&W or color 9-piece scramble puzzles of Prosimian Skulls, Prosimian Skulls and Hominoidea Skulls Word […]

Kids can learn history through DIY timeline game

Kids can learn history through DIY timeline game

Here’s an fun and effective way to help kids learn history and get an idea for when things happened in relation to each other. Make a timeline game! Here’s all you do: First, find a timeline of history that includes events you want to teach about. This site has collections of timelines of people, places […]

Ten sites for fun, free summer math practice

Right now, we finally have nice weather in southern Minnesota and it would be nearly criminal to have the kids sitting inside doing anything, even educational stuff! That said, everybody needs cooling off times and it’s great to have some educational fun on hand for rainy days. Here’s ten sites with games, activities, drills and […]

101 things to do this summer

Have you made your summer bucket list yet?  If you need a little inspiration, here’s our list from 2010 of 101 fun, educational, sentimental and silly things to do over the summer. Catch fireflies Take part in the library reading program Dance in the rain Master the multiplication tables Read the Little House series together […]

Free online learning games for every subject

Here are some great ways for the kids to play (and learn) in every subject from right at home today.  These online games are all free and require no special downloads or installations other than basics like Java or Adobe Flash Player in some instances. Math: Zeus’ Petals teaches kids multiplication skills.  The game says:  […]