workbox system for home school

I’ve been doing lots of hunting around the web for ideas to jump start our home school this fall.  While I know what Owen should be learning, I wanted a way to manage it all, keep it all organized, and help him understand what he has to do.  That was when I found Sue Patrick’s Workbox System book (or check out her website).  If you do a simple Google or pinterest search for workbox system you will find thousands of hits and ways to do this system.  It’s NOT a curriculum, just a way to manage it. 

Let me explain.  She suggests putting each activity for the day in a tub on a large shoe rack.  In the box goes everything that the child will need, crayons, glue, etc.  When they are done with the activity, they place the box on the floor.  That way, they see how far they’ve come and how many boxes they have to go.
Enter me *shuddering* at the thought of boxes  and supplies scattered all over my floor.

So this is how we’ve tweaked the system for us.  I’m taking many of my ideas from Erica at Confessions of a Home Schooler.  My mom bought me this awesome 10 drawer organizer from Sam’s.  I put a piece of velcro on each side of the handle.  One for the number of the box and one if it is a “work with mom” box.  Eventually, as he gets older he’ll have more and more activities that he can do on his own.  Obviously for now, everything he does is working with mom.He takes off the number and puts it on this sheet.  I only have enough open spaces for the amount of boxes he’s doing today.  For example, today we started with 5.  Box 3 held a snack with the activity which he thought was great. Here’s an example of what’s in store for tomorrow.  Excuse the dark, night time pictures.

Box 1: trace the letter Aa with a dry erase marker (3 times) Box 2: cut out the apples and glue them onto the tree (great cutting and gluing practice) Box 3: put together the 6 piece apple puzzle and read the words Box 4: practicing positional words – I will say “put your apple above the basket, put your apple under the basket, put your green apple beside the basket, etc”  We will them write a sentence about where he hides his apple. Box 5: a truck coloring page where he has to color the capitals one color and the lowercase another color.Box 6: We each will get an ice cube tray.  He will roll the dice and that’s how many little pieces of felt he gets, one in each little spot.  It goes back and forth and the first person to fill their tray wins.  Great for learning to count the dots on a die, and learning one to one correspondence.  And maybe to learn about losing. :)It’s easy for me to refill every night and I’m not scrambling during our actual lesson time to pull things for our next activity.  I’m very excited about this system and while I know we’ll have to tweak it as we go, tonight he was already asking what was in his work boxes for tomorrow.  Keep up the excitement kiddo!