Have you heard about Sue Patrick's workbox system? It is a method for organizing your homeschool no matter what curriculum you use. Do you ever have times where one child is waiting for a lesson while you are working with another? Do you ever have times where you run off to get supplies or copies that you forgot to get ready before school only to find when you come back that your students are off doing something else other than school? Do you have tons of fun things to incorporate into your school day but never get past the basics? These are all situations that can be helped with the workbox system.
Why I have come around to appreciating the system (I didn't exactly embrace it right away), is that it solved a lot of these problems for me. It also helped me visually represent my expectations for the school day in a way that my readers and non-readers could understand and navigate through independently. (Are we done yet? How much more school do I have to do? These questions disappeared!) I have modified the system to something that would work for us. I don't do everything that Sue Patrick outlines in her book, but I have taken enough of her ideas that I want to give her the credit for her work on all of this.
Her book can be found here:
Sue Patrick's Workbox System
In our system, the schedule strip is the basic structure for our day. I use the schedule strip to place in order the things that I need the children to do for the day in the order I wish for them to work. I make little cards for each activity that we do regularly and use velcro coins to attach them to th schedule strip. The boxes come in because each activity that is variable - review work, practice, typing, computer time, science, reading aloud, personal reading, etc. - goes into a box. I can change what is in the boxes every day. Each box has a number and when they see a number on the schedule strip they go to that box and take everything out that is in the box. They do the activity by themselves for the most part unless it has a "work with mom" card attached to the box. I am only using 5 boxes right now, but I can always expand that if we need more boxes. The original system has each child doing 12 boxes plus other activities. I don't place the activities we do every day in the boxes since we use magazine files I can stand up books like their learning logs for SWR or their math workbook in between two boxes without taking up a box. On their schedule strip I have made cards for these activities. In the picture of our set up you can see their materials on the left, then 5 boxes. Below each child's boxes is a shelf for their own supplies, a jar to place the cards from the schedule strip as they complete them, and a stacking paper tray for papers that need to be recorded or supplies that need to be put away.
I am very excited about the organization this has forced on my to be prepared every day for school and have all the materials ready for the children. I don't feel like I am running around like a chicken with my head cut off anymore. The boys can work independently through their activities and get help from me when they need it. They can see the amount of work that needs to be done and what they have left for the day. The boys love it too because I can use more of those fun educational things that we have that never get used! We have done more art and science this way. I hope to share some of the activities that we include in our workboxes as we go along and share the progress.
Here was one of the games I made to put in our boxes. The boys had fun with this! We now have dice that go up to 20 so I need to make a new game board. We were learning about plotting coordinates. Each boy take a turn rolling the dice and marking his coordinate. He has two choices per roll (5,1) or (1,5). If someone is already on a space he can erase their mark and make his own. The first one to 4 in a row wins. I made this simple game with a graph and numbers that I got from Erica Hite's
"Make a Wish" Collection from ScrapGirls. These letters and numbers are so cute.
