Workbox Wrap-up!

This post is a little late, but better late than never!!

As  previously mentioned, we started workboxes last Monday. It was such a great success that I wish we would have had them for the first week of our Polar Regions unit as well!! We got SO much accomplished in one week and I am please to announce that we reach almost every one of our 68 learning goals for a two week period (the ones we didn't were my fault for just not introducing them.

For anyone who doesn't know what workboxes are, it's basically a homeschool organization tool by which you place 12 activities in boxes each day and that's your day's school work. It keeps things on track, helps you to vary the content, and helps the student visually see the end nearing. There's a lot more to it, I'm sure, but there it is in a nutshell. So...here is a peek into our workbox week:



Here are two of our days worth of workboxes. Just to give you an idea of what a day looks like, day 1 had:

- Coloured Paper Camoflauge game
- Arctic/Antarctic animal flashcards
- World Geography cards (for use with the large wall map)
- Bears on a Balance activity
- Sorting Bags
- "at" family initial sound matching game
- "The Caterpillar" poem basket
- Arctic Animal sight word game
- Chinese and French picture books
- Artist of the Week Painting Flashcards
- Candyland
- Stamping with Samll Stampers and Inkpad

And here are some random snippits from the week's activities:

 Lily sorting seashells by type of shell. We also sorted bears by size, animals by species, toys by color, etc.

 You can't see it well here, but this is Lily doing her camouflage activity. I cut out animals from various colours of paper and Lily matched them to the place the would camouflage best after a discussion on what camouflage is.

 Lily doing her Canadian map puzzle. I got this at the Dollarama and I swear it's the best two bucks ever spent!! She LOVES it and will do it many times in a row!

 Violet playing with the worms she scoffed from Lily's sensory bin. Why worms? We haven't changed our bin since Halloween!

 Violet entertaining us with a little guitar music while we work.

 Lily doing her "The Caterpillar" poetry basket. I got this idea from Counting Coconuts.

 Lily learning to collage with scrap paper. This was actually an improptu activity after doing an activity from her "I Can Paste!" book. She wanted more and I just couldn't say no! Look how intense she looks!

Doing balancing/Weight prediction activities with Daddy.

There were LOTS more activities during the week, but I don't intend to make a mile long post every week. Some of our other favourites, however, were:

- Camoflauge I Spy: I made an all white scene with all white animals hiding in at an laminated it. Lily then had to find the hiding animals. 

- Fabric Strip Sequencing: I made various lengths of cut scrap fleece and Lily sequence them by length. She was obsessed with this. She wanted to do it every day.

- Secondary Colours Experiement: We mixed together the primary colours to get the secondary colours. Great fun! Especially painting with the coloured water on coffee filters afterwards!

So, that was our week! This week we're on to birds and we have lots of fun things in our boxes!! Do you have workboxes too? What fun activities are in your boxes this week??

Comments

  1. I really enjoyed this entry. I've been really interested in your home schooling and even though it's not something I am aiming to do for Olivia(at least not in the formal way you do it), I do like to maximize her learning opportunities during play and I like this set up. I am always trying to guide her play to keep her from falling into the rut of playing with the same toy/activity every day and this workbox setup would work nicely.

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  2. It's really effective, Crystal - you'd love it! In the next bin set of bins over (not pictured) I also have things that we free-play with at anytime - our musical instruments, blocks, magnetic letters, plastic animals, motor skills toys, plastic numbers, etc.

    The workboxes are particularly great because you can rotate activities in and out as often as you see fit!

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