Workboxes

I came across the workbox idea on one of my yahoo groups and immediately saw the benefits to this system. Dd was getting bored with school and I needed to find a way to add in some fun to our days. We had gotten into a bad routine of only doing academics and putting off anything that even remotely looked like fun. Sue Patrick came up with this system and describes it her book, 'Sue Patrick's Workbox System'. I will admit I have not purchased the book and have instead set up my system based on comments and reviews posted by others who have read or have set up their own systems based on the book.

I bought a piece of white poster board and small envelopes that look like library card holders. I glued the card holders to the poster board in 5 rows of 5. I am using this in place of the schedule strips. Each card slot will hold an index card on which I have written either a box number (to coincide with the baskets) or something for her to do that does not need to go in a basket (ie. walk the dog, read aloud, chores, snack, lunch, etc.). She moves through the rows from top to bottom and left to right, putting all of her finished index cards in the card slot on the far right in each row.

I purchased 9 medium stacking baskets from Target (below) in three different colors and we keep these on the bottom two shelves of our baker's rack in the kitchen. The kitchen is next to the office, so that is the ideal spot to keep dd's work. I am only doing this with her for right now, as ds will be heading back to public school in the fall. So far, little bug (20mo) does not get into the boxes. I am not sure what we will do if she decides they are interesting.

Today's work:

Box 1 (with Mom)-Bible study

Box 2-Bible Bee study

Walk Milo

Snack

Kitchen Duty

Box 3 (with Mom)-Math

Box 4-Literature book

Chores

Box 5-Research for Speech

Lunch

Library-Gather books

Read Aloud

Box 6-History Reading and AQ/TQ

Snack

Box 7-Preposition worksheet

As you can see, we do not use all 9 boxes or 25 card slots per day. They are there just in case we have lots of small assignments or I choose to break longer assignments into smaller pieces.