A New Twist on the Workbox System

We have been using Sue Patrick's Workbox System for two years now with good results. It is a way to organize daily school work that fosters motivation and independence in your students (click here for a description of how we used workboxes originally). In order to make it work most effectively, however, I have to spend time each evening re-ordering the work in the workboxes, at least those few items that do change from day to day. And in our case, we have one schedule Monday through Wednesday, a different schedule on Thursday and yet another schedule (lighter) on Fridays when we have co-op, so on Wednesday and Thursday nights I was having to take a bunch of work OUT of the workboxes completely and store it somewhere, so only the items left was the work to be done the next day.

I don't mind working hard for my kids, but there is a limit to my time and energy, and this became really cumbersome. So last week I enlisted the help of daughter G, who is very organizationally gifted. I asked her to help me think of a way to tweak the system and make it more flexible for us. I told her what my two goals were, 1) to make it easier on me to change the order of work, or the amount of work, and 2) to make it very clear to the boys what they were to do each day so that they could do it independently without asking me what came next.

Daughter G thought about it for all of 3 seconds and suggested that I write the subjects on the little velcro squares rather than numbers. Brilliant! I made new little squares of cardstock in each boy's color, wrote subjects on them, and put little pieces of velcro on the back. These went on the cardstock squares we were already using for "done" work and became, essentially, our new assignment charts. Here is son L's assignment chart for one day this week (click on photo to enlarge):



(By the way, "activity table" is a table in the back of our schoolroom that has history or science activities on it. The activities change week to week. Currently there are Ancient Rome activities on it.)

I also made a second cardstock square to move all the little subject squares to as they were finished. This is the "done" chart. So now all I need to do to rearrange work is to move the little subject squares around, or take some off and put other ones on (for those things we only do once a week, etc). Super easy!


I put the two cards together on a ring so they are easy to hang or take anywhere. This picture shows son L's assignment chart in front and his "done" chart hanging behind, while son G's green "done" chart is hanging in front and his assignment chart is hanging behind.


So we did away with the plastic tubs and our workbox racks are now just a place to store our notebooks and workbooks in any order. This summer, when our schoolroom is, Lord willing, completed, the workbox racks will probably go away for good.


We have used this new system all this week so far, and we all LOVE it! The boys have finished their work in record time, and I have been able to spend a good portion of each morning working on reading with Little Man (more on that later) while the older ones progressed through their assignment charts independently. This is easy to manage, flexible for our needs, while still being effective as a motivational and independence-fostering tool. Thank you daughter G!

Our Week in Review - Classical Greece

Warning: this is a long post with lots of pictures! I have fallen out of the habit of posting "our week in review" posts, so this is a combination of the last two weeks. I hope to get back in the habit because it's really encouraging to be reminded of all we did accomplish, and also a great way to share our every day school days with loved ones both near and far.

We have been studying the Classical period of Greece recently. The Archaic period (the time of Odysseus, Achilles, the Trojan War, etc) happened several hundred years before the Classical period, but the Classical period is what most people think of when they think of Ancient Greece. It's been fun to study this culture again, adding to the information we gained when we learned about the Archaic period.

I was shocked to realize that the "golden age" of Greece only lasted 47 years!! The culture itself lasted much longer and had far reaching influence on other nations and people groups, even up to the present day, but the "golden age" itself, when the culture was at its height, was very short. I don't remember ever learning that! (I love continuing to learn!)

Another amazing thing for us to learn was how the ancient Israelites, Babylonians, Persians, and Greeks were all tied together. The Israelites were conquered by the Babylonians (leading to the dispursion, or diaspora, of Jews to all other parts of the Middle East). A young man named Daniel was among those Jews sent to Babylon in exile, and he is of course the same Daniel we read about in the Bible, whose friends were thrown into the fiery furnace and miraculously saved by the Lord, who could interpret dreams and who ended up in the lion's den when he was much older (and also survived!).

The Babylonians were very shortly afterward conquered by the Persians (here is where the story of Queen Esther fits in), and the Persians became so great and powerful they decided to try and conquer the Greeks. A series of battles between the Greeks and Persians (known as the Persian Wars) ended with Persia's defeat, stopping the expansion of that empire into Europe. Then there was the "golden age" of Greece, when there was relative peace and the people had time and energy to devote to the development of the arts and sciences. Then followed the Peloponnesian War, between Sparta and Athens, which Sparta won and which began the gradual decline of Greece's greatness. All of this occurred within a span of just 165 years!! This was a huge history puzzle piece that got put in place for me, personally, during our studies.

Last week for virtual co-op, both daughter G and son G had the opportunity to make short power point presentations to share in class, covering an aspect of Greek history. Daughter G, being in virtual co-op for three years now, has made several power points. But it was son G's first time. I am so thrilled for the opportunity our children have to learn these skills early and have years to practice them. He really enjoyed it! He did his presentation on the Peloponnesian War. Here he is making it:


We discussed together (all five children) the similarities and differences between the city-states of Athens and Sparta, and made Venn diagrams to illustrate what we discussed. The ability to compare is another skill I am so thrilled to teach our children early. Everyone made a Venn diagram.....


.....even our kindergartner, Little Man! He drew a picture illustrating something unique to Sparta, something unique to Athens, and something they both shared. Then he dictated to me what they were, and I wrote for him. Click on the picture if you want to see it larger.


Despite the fact that our schoolroom makeover is far from done, it has been functioning very well for us this year. I am so thankful to have more space in which to spread out! At the back of the room we have a small table which is our "extra activities" table. I put some Greek activities on it, and then put a note in each of the children's workboxes to spend time at the activities table.


Many of the activities came from this kit: The Ancient Greece Treasure Chest.


Over the course of the last two weeks, here are some of the activities the children have worked on: (trojan horse is from the Archaic period of Greece, and doesn't belong with our Classical studies, but we made him anyway!)


They each wrote their name in Greek letters, and then stamped a Greek pattern around the edges of their paper.




They also made pictures of a Greek amphora (vase) from a template I had, and decorated them with Greek looking designs and pictures.



Such great practice for Little Man in fine motor skills!



We learned that Athens was the birthplace of democracy ~ government by the people. They instituted a council, and any citizen could serve on the council multiple times during his lifetime (of course, only male non-slaves could be citizens). To vote someone off the council required a certain number of "ostrakons" cast. An ostrakon was a broken piece of pottery, on which a name had been scratched. Many ostrakons have been found by archeologists. We get our word "ostracize" from this word! We decided to make our own ostrakons. I broke up a couple of flower pots to get us started, and that was actually kind-of fun!


The children painted them black.




When the paint was dry, they used a nail to scratch out a name in Greek letters, using this letter wheel from the Ancient Greek Treasure Chest (letter wheel showed roman sounds and their corresponding greek letter).




We ended up with five ostrakons voting Obama out of office! (click on picture to enlarge and see the writing better)


This week we are learning about some specific advances in math, science and philosophy made by the Greeks. We will have another Greek meal this Friday, rather than our usual pizza, and then next week we learn about Alexander the Great conquering the Greeks! (can't believe we are almost up to the time of Christ!)

Learning the Continents

I gave son G the task of teaching Little Man the names and locations of the 7 continents. He is doing this with the help of two identical posters, one cut up into individual continent pieces, with velcro on the back of each piece.



As he puts each piece on, Little Man repeats after G the name of the continent.


Just a couple days of this and he seems to have them down!

(this is our "mini" poster center until the schoolroom is completed)

Preparing for School - Week of July 4

Now that it's already July (how did that happen??) I have begun to plan and prepare for our next school year in earnest. Though I do love planning our school year, I try not to let this take over my whole summer. In order to have focused, uninterrupted prep time, and to help hold me accountable to one day a week, I was able to enlist the help of a high school friend of mine. Ross comes to watch the children for me one day a week for several hours so I can focus on school prep. I love, love, love this!!! It has been working out very well, and I am so thankful for his good care of the children and for all I have been able to accomplish while he is here.

Here is what I did this past week on my "Ross day".

I made "Fix It" grammar notebooks for my three older children. Fix It is another wonderful product made by IEW, the same company that produces our writing curriculum. In it there are 5 different classic stories (for different ages) that have grammar errors imbedded in them. Each day the children try to find the errors in ONE sentence. Yes, just one sentence! As they edit and correct, we discuss the appropriate grammar rules and then they rewrite the sentence correctly. By the end of the school year, they will have edited and rewritten the entire story! I love that it is broken down into very small chunks each day, and I love that the grammar rules will be very relevant because they are tied to writing. A few years ago my daughter used Editor in Chief, which is another error finding and fixing workbook, but neither of us were happy with it for several reasons. Of course we haven't actually used Fix It yet, but it looks far superior to EiC, and I'm excited to give it a try!


I purchased the teacher book, and then downloaded the student pages from the IEW website. I printed out these student pages, they are pictured below on the left. Each page represents a week's worth of work, 1 sentence to correct for each of 4 days. I found some blank lined pages here and printed them on the facing page, so my children can easily re-write the corrected sentences each week. This will also be cursive writing practice for all three of them (bonus!! penmanship practice taken care of too!).

I printed out a few pages that have space at the top for drawing pictures to go along with the story, since all our children love to draw!


By the way, I just want to put in a plug for my friend Debra and her fantastic website, notebooking pages.com. She has several sets of notebooking pages for sale, for all different subjects, and she also has a FREE section where I found the pages for our Fix It notebooks. She also has lots of samples and encouraging articles on how to use notebooking in your homeschool. Click on the button in my right sidebar to visit her website.


I was also able to prepare two more posters for our poster center. Centers are not a new idea to me, but I had never explored ways to make them work for us until last summer when I read about the Workbox System. We don't have tons of room and I just didn't think I could be creative enough to make centers work in our limited space and with our limited budget. However, Sue Patrick explains in her book how centers can be such a great way to reinforce learning in a fun way ~ so much so that children don't even realize they are still learning! They can also break up the day, giving a nice change of pace from bookwork.

I realized that since posters are flat and don't take up much space, that was a "center" I could do pretty easily. We used our poster center this past year and the children loved it! Over the years I had already acquired several posters, so as I was able I bought second posters identical to the first. Sue's point about a poster center, is that it needs to be interactive to be effective. So I followed her guidelines and cut out all the pieces of the second, matching poster.


Then I put velcro on the original poster and on the backs of all the matching pieces. Voila! Last fall I taught the children how to use the poster center. When they stick the matching piece onto the poster, they must either name the piece or say the word on the piece. This way they are seeing the item, saying the name of the item, and hearing themselves say the name of the item, all at the same time. Multi-sensory!

I have been blessed to find posters covering specific topics that I wanted to practice with the children. Here is one of our new ones for this fall:


Here is our poster center collection so far. We will use just 2 or 3 at a time in our poster center (which is the back of a toy bin shelf, which sticks out into the room creating a little "wall").


Each week I plan to post what I get done on my "Ross day", so stay tuned!

Our Week In Review

During Bible this week we finished reading through the book of John. This is our fourth gospel to read outloud, and on Monday we begin reading the book of Acts. This, and teaching our children to read, is the one part of our homeschool journey that I take greatest satisfaction in. I love many other aspects of homeschooling, of course, but knowing that our children are getting a daily dose of the truth and power of God's living Word, is so thrilling to me. What a privilege!

The two oldest boys (L pictured) also worked hard in their Stockade books this week. Stockade is our Wednesday night boys' club at church for those in 3rd through 5th grades. Son G is trying very hard to finish his second book and get all 18 patches before the end of May. After that he moves up to the middle school youth group! (gulp - how is it possible we will have two in middle school????!)


Little Man did a variety of fun activities this week. Here he is with his chicka chicka boom boom tree.


One of his activities with his brother L was a listening activity. This is another hold over from my public school teaching days. They both followed along in books with a story on tape (yes, tape. I taught public school about a hundred years ago!).


This preschool art activity with daughter G was a big hit! LOVE this book by MaryAnn Kohl, which I have had for years.


The book, with page marked, and all the supplies for this activity were in one of our daughter's workboxes. When she came to it, she and Little Man went up to the kitchen table where I'd laid out the big tray to work on, and she knew exactly what to do.






Ta-da! Sand art!


Our daughter did a series of science experiments this week which purposed to teach her all about experiments ~ what variables and controls are, what a blind study is, and a double blind study. How to eliminate all the variables so that you're testing for only one. Here she is dipping a variety of things into pepper filled water to see what thing will send the pepper flying toward the edges of the bowl (a piece of soap did it - rather dramatically!). We have gotten a little behind in science and will have to work very hard to catch up to where we should be in order to finish the book in June. Either that or work on science during the summer.

Meanwhile, her brothers and I read about walruses this week. They worked in their science notebooks, writing down what they thought was important or interesting about walruses from our reading, and drew walruses to go with their writing.




In history, we wrapped up our study of World War II and began learning about the Cold War between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. It is so interesting/strange/amazing for me to learn about events that happened during my lifetime. The children had never heard of the Cold War before, whereas I grew up in its shadow and have memories of nuclear attack drills during elementary school. I have a very vivid memory of when the Berlin Wall came down - I know exactly when it happened and where I was (Japan) and what I was doing (I was at a missionary retreat and we all watched the news and literally jumped and danced for joy).

During our history study the last couple weeks, the boys have had fun playing this old military strategy game called "Mission Command".




We also worked in our history lapbooks.


And we did the usual math and grammar and spelling. And that was our week!