Workboxes

Here I go with another attempt at being organized. Don't you do that? You start something thinking it will help you simplify things and then it's either too complicated or you forget to do it. That's me - I forget to do it. I have notebooks with behavior charts; cards for chores or a calendar for schoolwork. Hopefully this time, this method will stick.

My sister found something on a Yahoo homeschooling group about something called "Workboxes" based on Sue Patrick's book. The idea is neat - you organize all your child's work into plastic bins and when they're done, they just proceed to the next task. Great. But my house is not that big and I don't have a separate area that I feel I could dedicate to that many boxes. I'd start to feel like we were a warehouse. So this mom came up with a brilliant idea of putting all the work into one plastic box and she put hanging file folders inside. The blogger on Ruby Slippers School posted her idea and had great pictures to show how she did it. Each time the child finishes a task, s/he puts up the velcro picture and moves on to the next file. This has helped greatly in answering that tired old question, "how much more school are we doing?" and I can point to their box and they can see what's left. Since I am doing more light school during the summer, I wanted to add some chores that they could do as well. I haven't made a separate system for that yet, but they so need some consistency in that department. That might be in the works. But I laminated pictures of certain chores they needed to do once they finished so many files of work. (this link shows you what it looks like, but I found it at walmart for $25 and on amazon it's $40!) And I stuck trampoline breaks, or playing outside or reading with me in there, too! We used it for the first time last week and it worked so well. They got done with their work quicker, Egypt has her own art projects to do and then we were able to plan out other things like going to the park or a cooking project in the afternoon. We took the week off this week for Vacation Bible School, but plan to start it up again next week. Gotta keep those brains fresh!