PhotobucketPhotobucketPhotobucketPhotobucketPhotobucketPhotobucketPhotobucketPhotobucket

Saturday, August 29, 2009

Weekly Workboxes

So, I tried a little adaptation to the workbox system this week, and I think it's going to work for us. The only issue we've been having with this system is that it can get extremely tedious handling all the different numbers and switching them from box to box each evening, making sure all the numbers coincide perfectly so that I am never working with both children at the same time (unless I want to be). So, this week, instead of numbering the work with mom boxes, I just used the work with mom sticker, and lumped all the work with mom boxes as the beginning for Little Bean and at the end for Miss O. So, only their work alone boxes were numbered; O's at the beginning, and Little Bean's at the end. This saved a lot of time for set up, and they actually seem to do better when I lump the "work together" boxes together instead of interspersing them with work alone boxes.

I was also having a bit of trouble because a lot of the work they do is together. For several of the subject areas I like to have Miss O sit in with us because it's things I know she'd benefit from and enjoy. In the past, this meant that her shelf would have an empty workbox on it, indicating that she would be working with Bean and I on his box. This really got annoying to me, so instead, I lumped all the boxes that the 3 of us would do all together at the beginning, followed by independent work for O and the rest of the work with mom boxes that O couldn't participate in with Bean. It's worked out to do it this way, so we'll keep this up unless something more useful comes along.

Here are Little Bean's boxes for one day last week:

100 Lessons and HWT workbook:
All About Spelling, segmenting:
Right Start math, Recognizing quantities 1 through 10 without counting, and arranging finger and tally cards in order:
Explode the Code, Book 1 and Bob Book 11:
Build Mat Man and then draw him from HWT:
Two puzzles; Bean must put them both together separately even though the pieces are mixed together. This is how I make our easy puzzles more challenging:
HWT, tracing letters:
Cutting foam:

Here are Miss O's boxes. This day, there wasn't any work that the 3 of us could do together, so she went straight to independent work:
Geoboard:
Tangrams:
Building silly faces with clings:
Putting cherries on the cherry tree:
Get Ready for the Code and HWT pre-k:
If you are doing workboxes too and would like to share, please use the MckLinky below. Be sure to link to the exact workbox post, rather than to your main blog page. Thanks for sharing!



5 comments:

Nadia said...

I love your workboxes this week , they are great.. i love your ideas!!

Willow said...

I love your idea to make the puzzles harder. I am going to try that this week. Thanks!

Our Little Family said...

Just wanted to pop over and say that even though we're a little young to use workboxes, I just love to see your pictures and hear how it's working out for you all. You are doing such an amazing job!

Also, I dyed/colored some rice (well, a LOT since it was fun and easy) today and used your instructions. It turned out great and I can't wait to use it. I linked back to your blog, too. So, thank you!!

Lea said...

Where did you find your tangrams? They are really cute. You are doing a great job. I enjoy reading about what your kids are working on. I have one child who would probably love to do something like this every day and another who tends to buck the system and not want to do what I want him to do. One day, when I was trying to get him to try sounding out letters, I pretended he was the teacher and I was asking him to teach me and he thought that was funny and he did what I wanted him to do. He is definitely going to challenge my teaching abilities. Sorry I wrote a book. Do your kids ever push back about doing school work?

Unknown said...

Little Family--Thanks for linking me! Glad you enjoyed the rice project!

Lea--The Tangrams are from Ross (a discount store). I do get some resistance from my 3 yo concerning the boxes, and rarely from my Kinder. But I find that it is usually because I've put in things that are too challenging/easy for them and then they don't want to do it because it's not "fun". As I go along, I am getting a better feel for how to pick things that they will benefit from and enjoy. They generally don't complain about the curriculum/work with mom stuff.

Related Posts with Thumbnails