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!

Home school! {3 year old preschool}

Ahh September.  While we have had a wonderful, laid back summer filled with lots of parks and pool time, I really do love the routine that comes with September.  I am putting massive amounts of new routines into place around here and while I’m sure some won’t stick (new chores/commission for Owen, new cleaning schedule for me, new menu plan, etc) I still love the organizing part of the fall.

PS – have I mentioned William got a new job?  No?  I’ll get ya more details on that too.

I have been thinking a lot about the idea of homeschooling, well since even before I had kids.  My mom homeschooled myself and 2 siblings through 3rd grade.  We went to public school in 4th grade (my youngest brother went in kindergarten).  Since I actually have a degree in education and have all the supplies, it really did seem to make sense.  Another big factor for me was that Owen is introverted and really thrives in our time at home and being in a routine. 

So we’ve decided that our motto will be “One year at a time and one kid at time.”  I’m going to reevaluate at the end of each school year and try to listen to what God’s telling me about that particular kid, what’s best for them, and what he has for me (since homeschooling is definitely a full time job I’m committing to right now).

So once I decided to really commit to it, then came the overwhelming part of figuring out what to do.  Owen will technically be in preschool for 3 years because of his summer birthday so I want to take things SLOW but still give him a good structure of activities 3 days a week (one day will be library day and a music class and the other day is our Mom2Mom group at church).  I have plenty of pre-K activities in my boxes in the basement, but I found this blog and fell in love with everything she does.  I decided to buy her preschool Letter of Week Curriculum and just in prepping the first 2 weeks, I love it!  It’s definitely going to make our ink and laminating costs go up, but I figure I’ll have it ready to go for all future kids.  And can I say that I LOVE to laminate? :)  She has a weekly guide for you to follow for each letter.  I teach letters in a different order than she does, but it still works no matter what you want to do! Her activities have a great range of skills covered and are themed with cute graphics and easy to make instructions.  I of course will be supplementing with ideas from my own teaching like a long calendar time, teaching ALL the letters (not just the one of the week), lots of singing, and tons of art projects.  I’ll do a separate post and link to various curriculum, books, and CD’s I love and will incorporate throughout our year.I dug out some of my school room decorations.  While it’s not my dream school space (someday our basement will get done) it’s going to work PERFECT for where we’re at right now with school.  Literally a few minutes before I was going to buy a table on Amazon, this little guy popped up on Craigslist.  How I love Sir Craig and his list. Ahh, is there anything prettier than new school supplies?Here’s a little closer look.  You will see a calendar with a season and weather graph.  Our letter, number, and shape of the week are in page protectors at the top so I can just slip in a new paper every week.  The color book is hanging on a hook.  I have a clipboard with my plan for the week and a pocket chart and white erase board.  The red apron is an idea I tweaked from my friend Christine.  When school is in “session” I wear my red apron just to signal that it’s a different time for Owen.  Today when I took it off he yelled “now you’re mommy” so I guess he got it.This is our workbox system.  I’m going to do a separate post on that as it’s too long for here.  Used it for one day and already am in LOVE!And that’s the start to our new homeschooling journey!