Weekly Workboxes!

Another workbox post!

Here are Bean's boxes:
100 Lessons, we are on 68 now: Right Start Math--we have been working on money A LOT! He is really enjoying this, and getting it too.

Explode the Code--still working on three letter decodable words. He does 2 pages a day in a work alone box:

This was a simple craft I made up for both kid's boxes. I drew some simple shapes on a piece of paper and then taped different materials to the back which would leave a textured look when colored over. The kids colored each shape in a different color, and then Bean cut his out:

Handwriting Without Tears: We've started lowercase letters, and this week we did c, a, d, and g:

Here's our All About Spelling. Bean sometimes does his spelling from dictation on the whiteboard:

And, Draw Write Now. He doesn't draw that well, but this is good for copywork and the drawing element is fun for him:

Stringing:

And here are Miss O's boxes:

Hi Ho Cherrio--she plays this by herself by spinning the spinner and following the directions:

Making silly faces with Colorforms:

Here is her work with mom box--Kumon Uppercase letters, and Go for the Code, in which we were working on "z":

Then we worked on counting foam shapes and matching them to the numeral:

Here are some simple 2 part puzzles. Miss O really didn't like these. I think I may be getting rid of them because she doesn't like them and Bean is too old for these. We have had them for a while and they have never been a favorite, unfortunately:

Here's that project I was talking about that was in Bean's box

And that's it! If you have a post on workboxes from this week, link up!

Weekly Workboxes

I thought I'd do something different this week with my workbox post. By now, if you've been following the workbox posts, or if you look over them in the archives, you've probably seen most of the things that we often put in our boxes. I mean, we only have so many supplies that I rotate through. So, instead of just featuring what was in our boxes this week, I thought I'd do a little homeschool walk-through of our workboxes.

A typical school day (lately anyway) begins in the afternoon. The kids usually eat lunch at about 11:30 or so, and then they spend an hour in their rooms for "quiet time." Usually Little Bean will play, and Miss O either plays or falls asleep for a while. After quiet time, they know that school time usually begins. So when I get them out of their rooms, I let them know that we will be starting school, and part way through we will have afternoon snacks. We head to the school room, and Miss O begins working alone while I work with Little Bean on reading and math.

On this day, Miss O started off with lacing. She isn't great at lacing, but has shown some interest in it lately, so I thought I'd start her off with it this time. Unfortunately, she wasn't into it this day, and did a lot of complaining and whining when the strings weren't cooperating. Since many of her activities are open ended and don't have definite end times, my rule is that neither of them moves along to the next box until the other child is ready to move on from their box. In other words, she is expected to play with the lacing cards until I am finished with Little Bean's reading lesson. Sometimes this means that she is laying on the floor with nothing to do for a few minutes, or sometimes she will take out books or playdough while she waits.
When Bean and I finished his reading lesson, we pulled out the math box. Miss O played dress up with this Woodkin's doll while we did math. On this day, she was more interested in what we were doing, and asked to sit and listen. As long as she isn't being disruptive, I don't mind her sitting in. Sometimes she'll ask to work with Bean's abacus during math time. Usually I don't have a problem with that either. After the second box, we usually break for afternoon snack. If for some reason we are doing school in the am, we still break after 2 boxes for morning snack.

After I finished working on math and reading with Bean and we've finished a quick snack, he is ready for some alone time, so I usually give him two work alone boxes in a row. This gives me enough time to work with Miss O on her "reading" lesson (alphabet sounds) and on handwriting, as well as any other box that she may need some guidance with. On this day, she had a number worksheet in one of her boxes. She was supposed to trace the numeral and count the number of hearts. I worked on this with her. That way I could see how many of the numbers she recognized and how accurate her counting was.

While Bean continued his alone work, Miss O and I got busy with her Explode the Code primer. This day we were working on the letter "y" in her primer. I usually read her an Itsy Bitsy Letter book and then we open her primer and work on the corresponding letter activities. Usually we do 3 pages, but if she isn't into it, sometimes we only do 2. It normally takes us about 4 school days to finish all the pages on a particular letter. Next we pull out her handwriting book, and we generally do only one page from that book per day.

The way I do her "lessons" is as follows: I simply follow the pages, dictating sounds to her, naming pictures, and letting her tell me the sounds that they make. I explain the instructions and guide her as she works through the activities. Sometimes I pull out letter cards and she will match them with the correct pictures (initial sounds). I don't do anything really elaborate, and I don't usually have to plan anything in advance, so it's pretty straight forward.

Once we finish her "work with mom" boxes, it's back to work alone boxes for the remainder of the school day. Usually I have a few more boxes to do with Little Bean (Science, Grammar, Spelling, etc), but sometimes in there I have a break where neither of them is scheduled to "work with mom". During those times, I like to work with Miss O a bit more if she has a box that I think she would benefit from having a bit more guidance in.

Here she had a Magic Pics coloring page (kind of like Color Wonder):

And then here she was separating fruits and veggies with our felt food. This was way too easy for her!

This last box is an example of one that she would likely need more guidance with. These preschool worksheets fell during a time when I had nothing to do and was not needed, so I spent a bit of time going over it with her.

Once Miss O finishes her work (which usually is before Little Bean even though I do try to make the load even time-wise), she is free to go play or do as she pleases. Usually she goes into our school storage closet and chooses an activity to keep herself busy--playdough, coloring, stringing, a game, or some other material. When Bean finishes up, they run off to play together.

So that's a typical school day for Miss O! How does the workbox system play out in your home? If you've written a post this week about your workboxes, link up below! Please be sure to link to your exact post about workboxes, and it would be awesome if you could link back to this post so that others reading your post will be directed here and can start linking up or enjoying other bloggers who have left their link as well.

Weekly Workboxes

Just featuring Little Bean's boxes this time--for some reason the pictures were not uploading correctly, so this is all I could do.

Here is Bean's reading lesson. We are close to Lesson 60 now.
Here is Bean's Right Start Math box. We do this 4 times a week, and generally speaking, Little Bean enjoys and understand the material. This time we played a little counting game and worked with place value.

Here is a little stamping activity I prepared for him. Little Bean was supposed to stamp the word based on the picture I drew. He did okay with this one. He was unsure of the spelling of some of the words, but I encouraged him to use his knowledge of sounding out to help him.

Here is his Explode the Code Book 1. He is over half way through this one, and does 2 worksheets twice a week in a work alone box.
All About Spelling--Little Bean had a "spelling test". All the words are CVC, so it was no problem for him at all. Obviously there is no need for me to grade him, but essentially that is what this exercise was--writing words from dictation.
Here he is working alone on review of center starting capital letters:
This is a snowman craft. I will post about it later in the week:
Miss O had the following in her boxes:

Snowman craft

Handwriting Without Tears PK--working on numbers

Go for the Code, Book C

My Itsy Bitsy Letter Book--W

Magnetic and Non Magnetic

Felt Stories

Playdough

Dog Matching Game

Do you use workboxes? Link up below!

Weekly Workboxes

Here is our workbox post!

Little Bean and Miss O both participated in this science lesson on measuring with a non-standard unit.
Little Bean practiced his grammar and handwriting with our Sentence School curriculum:

We have finished all the numbers and capital letters in Handwriting Without Tears. So we are doing some review for the next week or so. Here Little Bean was practicing his numbers.

This was a rocket craft. I'll post more about this later.

Our reading curriculum--Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons:

And math. This week we worked more on addition and some on place value.

Here is a work alone box for Bean. He was to match upper and lower case letters using these printable from 1+1+1=1.

Here are Miss O's preschool boxes.

First, she did these 3 part puzzles. She did really great at these this time, and finished about 20 of the 26 puzzles!

She had some free play with these magnetic play scenes. We purchased this at Walmart probably about a year ago.

Here is her work with mom box. We are working on numbers in the handwriting book, and the letter G in Go for the Code.

Miss O did the rocket craft as well.

And here is that Woodkin's Dress Up doll I posted about earlier this week.

Lastly, Miss O spent some time playing with the dry erase board. She loves this toy!

I'd love to hear what you've been up to this week! Link up with the McLinky below!

Weekly Workboxes

We are moving right along with our Kinder and Preschool work! I calculated today that we have done 53 days of "school" so far this year! Here are somethings we have been up to this week:

Little Bean worked on grammar and handwriting with our Sentence School curriculum. This follows the same format each day. We draw two word cards from a box, either verbs, nouns or adjectives. We then read the words and write sentences about them.
Here is our science workbox, which this day was about comparing natural and man-made objects. Both Miss O and Little Bean enjoyed this, but Miss O didn't quite "get" it. She enjoyed exploring the various objects I had collected, however.

This is a worksheet Little Bean did on his own to assess whether or not he understood the science lesson on natural and man-made. He did great with this!

This a work alone box for Bean--stencils and crayon rubbings.

We only got through two lessons in this book this week because I decided to repeat them both twice. Little Bean read all the words in the stories okay, but it was hard work, and I wanted him to have a little more practice before moving on to the next lesson.

Here is our math workbox, and on this day we were working on the part-whole concept. Using a graph with one big circle at the top connected to two smaller circles below, we worked on the different ways to split 5 into two groups.

This is a work with mom box, and we worked on addition using snap cubes. I purchased this book, which is full of activities and ideas for use with the snap cubes, a long time ago, but have never really cracked it open. This week I decided to pull it out and give it a try. Some of the activities look fun, but I have yet to decide whether or not I like this book.

Miss O is moving right along in her Explode the Code Primer (Book C). We worked on "l" this week. And in handwriting, she finished up her capital letter practice, and is moving on to numbers next week. We are almost to the end of this book...not sure what she will do for handwriting after this, because she is not quite ready to graduate from tracing to actually forming the letters on her own.

This a work with mom box that just contains foam numbers and corresponding shapes. First we sorted the shapes and then counted how many of each shape. Then we matched the groups with the correct numeral. I was surprised Miss O actually recognized a couple of the numerals!

This is a stamping activity where I gave Miss O some pictures and she was supposed to match them to the initial sound. She usually does fine with these kinds of activities.

Here, Miss O is to work on cutting skills using playdough. Pink of course!! ;)

And lastly, Miss O had some tangrams to complete. She was tired by this time, and didn't complete them all.

If you would like to share what your little ones are doing with the workbox system this week, please use the MckLinky below and link up to the exact post where you've talked about your workboxes!