Last week our children were away visiting the grandparents for the week. What a blessing to have an entire week to prepare for homeschool! I started the week by attending our local homeschool convention. Who in their right mind would think that I would enjoy that so much?! I purchased some curriculum, I listened to some speakers and I learned a few good tips for ways to run our school. The remainder of the week I laminated until I thought I broke the machine, I read ideas all over the internet, I printed, I planned and I scheduled.
I've decided to run school in six week cycles here at our house. I've also decided to use Sue Patrick's Workbox system.
I don't like the idea of using shoe boxes because not everything fits in the shoe boxes. I don't like the idea of some of my workbooks and projects not fitting into the box properly so I went on a hunt to find just the right boxes for my house. Thanks to my friend Julia, I found these cool boxes over at my local Dollar Tree. When turned one way, they nest into each other. When turned opposite ways, they stack. Super cool. Big enough for most of my projects, tidy when the day is complete.
Last week during my planning time, I made custom workbox tags for each child. My 6 year old got Star Wars Legos, my 5 year old got Indiana Jones Legos and my 8 year old daughter got Kit Kittredge. I found blank workbox tags at
Confessions of a Homeschooler blog. Scroll down to her workbox section and find the download for "blank workbox numbers." I then went out to the internet under google images and found images that I wanted for each child. I saved them and resized them so they were 1.5 inches tall and 1 inch wide. Placed them each 12 times onto a new document and printed. Then I cut them out, glue sticked them to the blank space on the downloaded document and laminated. Adhered my velcro dots to the boxes, the schedule strip and the back of each individual number. Voila! A custom workbox plan for each child.
When I am planning my workboxes for the week, I use this excel spreadsheet. However, not owning the Microsoft software to run it, I downloaded it and use Open Office (free) software instead. On the same blog link I shared above, scroll down into the Workbox printables section again and click workbox planning worksheet. Save it and then open it in Open Office (if you don't own Excel).
The thing I love about this is that I can plan for our group time for the items we are all working on together. Then the kids can proceed to the assigned workboxes I have planned for the day. It also gives me three pages in my planner that I can look at each night to fill the workboxes quickly and pretty easily. I can lay it all out ahead and the next morning starts out pretty smooth.
This was only day one but it went well for us. I'm sure things will get tweaked at my house as we use the system more but after day one, I can tell you that I think I've found the framework to structure our school.
For day one, school was completed in about 2 hours with three kids working together with Mom's help. In group time we covered the order of the months of the year, the order of the days of the week, our verse for this six week session, the 8 history cards we're learning this week, skip counting by twos, prayer and reading a chapter from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Mason (age 5) completed 9 boxes that included following instructions for sticker placement, math, lacing, tracing, handwriting, story sequencing, reading a Bob book to Mom, a matching game and a craft where he wrote a thank you note to Grandma and Grandpa which included copywork and craft time. Case (age 6) did the following instructions for sticker placement assignment, math, a couple Brain Quest cards with Mom, some critical thinking exercises, a greater than/less than worksheet, the thank you note to the grandparents, handwriting, some shapes work and put together his newest Lego kit. (We gave him the year long Lego club as part of his birthday gift last year. This month's kit arrived while he was away last week so I put it in his box for his final activity for the day.) Ashlee (age 8) had boxes that included her Wordly Wise book, a calendar activity, handwriting practice, consonant teams worksheet, skip counting, reading a chapter book and the thank you note craft.
The children seem to be pleased with the idea that they "clock in" and "clock out" each day.
For these, I simply printed out the downloads that are free when you purchase Sue Patrick's workbox book. I glued them to some library envelopes (25 for $1 at Dollar Tree right now). I laminated them all, used a box cutter to put the slit through the top layer of lamination so the kids could slide their punch in. Each kid has a laminated card with their name and a picture of them for use as the time card. I'm not sure how long this aspect of her suggestion will last but for now, the novelty amuses my kids.
Day one went pretty well considering it was a whole new system. There were a few hiccups but mostly I was able to work with each child during the time they needed my attention. The system will likely get smoother as time goes on but for now, I'm pleased that it went smoothly considering I was schooling three kids at a time - two of whom can't read.
Do you use the workbox system? How does it work for you?
