Boys!

Ds never ceases to surprise me. Last Friday, he thought it would be a good idea to put a cable bike lock around his neck. This is the kind of bike lock that looks like a noose when it is locked. He did not think to find the key first, but simply acted on his impulsive thought. He tightened it enough so it would not fit over his head, but gave him plenty of room to breathe. He was never in any danger, other than dying of embarrassment.

We did not have any idea where the key for the lock was, so husband suggested going to a hardware store to have it cut off with a bolt cutter. Ace Hardware was out of bolt cutters and he had to go to his therapy appointment with the lock around his neck. It kind of looked like a tie, with one end hanging almost to the ground. My next thought was to take him to the fire station to see if they had bolt cutters, but luckily, the therapist took pity on him and they walked back to Ace and cut it off with a wire cutter. I, of course, did not get a picture. Why can't I remember the camera at times like these.

Do boys ever grow up?

Bike lock-$15

Trip into Ace-embarrassing

Memory of event-Priceless

Thinking Outside the Box

How many boxes do you fill? I typically fill 6-8 boxes per day

Do you expect your children to go in order? Yes, because I throw in fun things to be done after lengthy assignments to break the day up.

Do you use the schedule strips? No. I used poster board and library card holders to create a schedule. I glued the card holders on the poster in 5 rows of 5 cards. Dd starts with the top left card and moves along the rows until she completes the last filled card holder. I have written subject titles onto index cards for the things she does regularly, like AQ/TQ work, research, edit, rough draft, chores, etc. I then use additional index cards to write the specific assignment down. For instance, I will right the chapter or pages to be read and that is placed in the box with the book(s).

How long does it take you to fill the boxes? It typically takes less than 15 minutes.

Do you fill your work boxes EACH night with all new items? Some subjects are done daily, such as math, Bible study, study for Bible Bee, and walk the dog. Those just get rearranged each day for variety.

Do you have some boxes repeat each day so there is less filling/refilling? See answer above

What do your kids do with the empty boxes? Right now the filled boxes go on the top shelf of our baker's rack and the empty boxes are placed on the bottom shelf. This works because I have room for 3 sets of 3 stacked boxes on each shelf. If/when we need more than 9 boxes dd will just put the completed boxes on the floor beside the baker's rack.

Do you put away the ‘supplies’ each night? or do your kids? So far I have not put any supplies in the boxes except for the vanilla pudding mix that dd was to use to make cookies. She is 10yo and more than capable of finding her own pencil, pen and paper. Next year I will be putting supplies in the boxes for science experiments, history lapbooks and projects, sewing projects, Keepers of the Faith activities, etc. I will probably have dd help with putting things away.

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.

New addition

Ds has been placed on homebound and will be schooling with us for the rest of the year. A teacher from school will come to the house once or twice per week and go over his schoolwork. I will also give him additional work as I see fit to fill in his days. Hopefully this goes well and we don't have to battle with attitude adjustments too much. 

Strawberry Picking

I set up a field trip to one of the local strawberry farms. I have never picked my own strawberries so it was a new experience for me. We ended up filling 4 of these white baskets and purchased some onions that had recently been picked. I was dumb when I went to freeze the strawberries, though, and I froze them with their stems still on. Now I need to go through and cut the stems off when they are still frozen as it is quite messy if I wait until they thaw out.

This is the little girl I watch during the week. She had a blast sitting in the aisles and holding the baskets. She could not pull the strawberries off so I helped her by pinching them with my fingernails.
Dd did a wonderful job filling 2 baskets. We both had sore backs and legs at the end. 
Here is little bug. She decided the strawberries were good enough to eat right out of the basket, dirt and all.
Anybody have any good strawberry recipes?

Easter

Dd and ds had a great time finding easter eggs. I hid lots of them inside and then went out back and randomly tossed more into the buffer between our yard and the golf course. We only lost one egg outside, and luckily it was plastic. Someday someone will find it and become .50 cents richer. This just proves that you are never too 'big' to hunt for eggs (ds is now standing at 6').

International Night

One of the support groups we belong to hosted an International Night in which each family chose a country and put together a display. We chose Scotland and used several pictures and books dh and I got when I visited him during a port call. We chose to make scones for our dish and made one batch with a cheese topping and the other batch with a sugar topping. We brought along strawberry jam, and surprisingly, some of the ladies put the jam on the cheese scones. I was not sure if people would like them, but they disappeared at an alarming rate. Dh and ds came and looked at all the displays and sampled the food before heading out.