A Day with Workboxes

I thought I'd share more about the workboxes as I've gotten several comments about them. First of all, I would again suggest that you check out Sue Patrick's site as she came up with the idea of workboxes. I bought her ebook and it has more in it than what I'm sharing with you.

Here's a phoot of our 12 boxes (they are see-through shoeboxes bought at WalMart for less than $1 each). I actually bought my shelves too big but I like having the bottom shelf for storage. I need to get some kind of crates for it, though. This picture shows the boxes set up for today. As the day goes on, each box is emptied and stacked up so it really shows visually how much we've done and how much is left.

I thought I'd show a sample day of what I put in our boxes. I really feel its a little like setting out Easter baskets! I always put a couple of things that I know Alexandra will get excited about. Anyway, we do the boxes left to right.

#1 - Our current read-aloud (for our Gold Rush study) - "By the Great Horn Spoon" - it's a great book and we finished it today!

#2 - We are participating in an 8 week co-op right now and one of Alexandra's classes is a math facts class. We do 4, 5-minute drills EVERY DAY for 8 weeks! She is working on mastering her addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division facts. I print off her worksheets from this site.

#3 - Jonathan Park study guide. If you aren't familiar with Jonathan Park, we HIGHLY recommend it. It is a great series of audio stories that teach creation in a wonderful, entertaining, in-depth, scientific way. We're using this as our Bible study right now, too.

#4 - Our memory book. I will write more about this later as this is the other thing that is totally changing our homeschool!


#5 - Cool "Fact Monster" worksheets I found this week. Each worksheet has 10 questions about various subjects that you use to look up online at the Fact Monster site. It's fun and educational!

#6 - Lapbook parts to the Invention class I'm teaching. I'm using a free lapbook from A Journey Through Learning and adding my own acitivies.

#7 - Another part of my Invention class -making our own example of the Gutenberg Bible. (I'll try to share it tomorrow)

#8 - Our Greek workbook -Greek for Children. We're studying Greek and Westward Expansion with another family.

#9 - Grammar workbook - Rod & Staff.

#10 - We have used these "Which Way USA?" workbooks off & on for years. We bought them for $1 each at Half Price books, I think.

#11 - One of the classes at our co-op is a science class and Alexandra is growing some seeds. The green booklet is where she is to record the growth of her plants (they haven't sprouted yet). And, there is also a seed packet of sunflowers. This is from The Great Sunflower Project. We just got our seeds and will plant them and then, this summer, observe them and count the bees several times. It is a research project based on the fact that bees have been dying off.

#12 - A math game. One of the classes I'm teaching is a math class for 1st & 2nd graders. A mom loaned me several games so this is one we needed to try out!

Sometimes, I place little notecards in the front of some of the boxes - like "go outside and play for 10 minutes before doing this box" or "you can have a snack while doing this box."

And, I need to make a list of what things we need to cover every day (math, Bible, read-aloud) and those I need to do several times a week, etc. I also want to make a list of fun things I can include, like the games, etc.

Hope this helps! And, let me know if you decide to try out these workboxes.