Workboxes

With this being our first official year of homeschooling, I have been doing tons of research on the best ways to go about teaching my children.  I have always taught my children.  In fact, I began showing my daughter Montessori activities at the age of two.  Back then though, it was just me teaching my child because she wanted to learn.  Now, even though she still wants to learn, I have to be sure she progresses appropriately as she will be tested at the end of the year by the state.

So I have done my best to assess not only my daughter's learning style, but also my teaching style.  I am trying to find the best balance between us to make the experience as fruitful as possible.

I am not sure what personality type I qualify as, but I do recognize some of my strengths and weaknesses.  I am the type of person that needs everything ready and available at my fingertips or I will be setting myself up for failure. This means I need to be organized or I could end up spending hours just staring at the television.  This is not an exaggeration, sadly, it has happened before!  If my day is not scheduled out with meaningful tasks, I will get lost.  The down side of my need for organization, is that when I do prepare things in advance, I can lose myself in the set up!  I can literally spends hours, even weeks, planning and organizing.

Knowing this, I have been using a curriculum that has daily lesson plans for Phonics, Handwriting and Math.  This has worked great.  Mainly because I know we need to do school and it's easy enough to just open up a book and do as it says. Still, even with the lessons set up, I still have to gather materials, find worksheets. manipulatives etc. and I often scramble for those things while I give my daughter busy work.

Unfortunately, I do not want to follow the daily lessons from this curriculum for other subjects and this is where I am falling short.  I prefer to have hands on, creative lessons for things like Science, Bible Studies, Foreign Language etc. 

I have dozens of books piled next to my bed as well as a notebook filled with great ideas for lesson plans.  But they are not organized enough for me to actually use them and I can't seem to find the time to do that. So I end up lugging the huge pile of books over to where we are doing school, then I browse through them blankly and end up doing nothing.

I need a system.  Something that once it is in place, it is easy to change out for new lessons and activities daily.  I need something so that everything I need for a lesson is easily accessible - this includes any worksheets, manipulative etc. Most importantly, I need something that I can adapt for my toddler's use as well.  My son is nearly 22 months old.  He is undoubtedly very smart.  However, he has some speech delays.  Due to his speech delays, I can tell he will not be in the same place at two years old that his big sister was at that age.  This is fine as every child is different, but I still want to be sure that I am taking advantage of this crucial time to implement a love of learning.  So I want to utilize a system that will keep him engaged in something beneficial while I am teaching his big sister.

When discussing these concerns with a friend, she mentioned the use of workboxes.  She had just begun researching them herself, but already loved the concept.  So of course, I began to research them for myself.


Workboxes are an organizational system that can be used in conjunction with any curriculum.  The purpose is to have a successful, structured school day while helping your children gain independent work habits. This system was developed by Sue Patrick, a homeschool mom from North Carolina.  She has a published book that details the system called, Sue Patrick's Workbox System User's Guide 

I have not read the book, but basically from what I've seen from other homeschoolers, the way this works is like this; you use several containers, like plastic shoebox containers for instance. Each box is numbered and filled with a different lesson/activity.  Your child works through the boxes one by one, in order,  until they are all completed.  There are many more details to the system, but as I've said, I have not read through the book!

I can see myself spending hours setting this up initially.  I'm sure I would want my boxes to be cute and then I need to find the perfect spot to place them etc.  However, I think once it is set up, changing out the contents of the boxes will be not as time consuming - I hope!  I'm fully expecting to lose myself in the set-up, but I am also expecting that the day to day change after the initial work will be quick and easy.

As I previously mentioned, I mostly want to use these for my son. I can imagine filling the boxes with lots of hands-on, Montessori type activities for him.

Here are some of things I would like to include for him:

Items to enhance fine motor-skills:  Lacing beads, Lacing Cards, Puzzles, Clothes pin games, Play dough, Transferring activities using tongs, tweezers, spoons etc., Pouting activities using rice, dried beans etc., Sorting games using colored pom-poms, foam blocks etc.

Sensory Activities: Textured blocks, Smelling bottles, Sandpaper letters, etc.

Art projects: Finger Painting, Activities using glue, Stickers, Crayons, Colored Chalk etc.

Literature: Worksheets of Letters to color, Letter magnets, Picture Board Books etc.

Pre-Math Skills: Counting blocks, Big and Little comparisons, Pattern Blocks etc.

I still need to read more about this, find some boxes to use (hopefully I can re-purpose something for this), figure out where I can place them etc.

As for my daughter, she needs my assistance still with lessons -she is not quite ready for independent study.  the ADHD makes it difficult for her to stay on track without my guidance.  Still, I think this would be great for her because she will be able to actually see her day's workload diminishing as the boxes empty. Hopefully that will translate to less frequent, "are we done with school yet" questions!

I hope to be able to update you on my progress in about two weeks.  This is the deadline I have set for myself to get this into daily use.  I am going to need a lot of patience and a lot of persistence, but I think it will be worth it in the end!

But that is just one mom's opinion.

Have you used, or do you currently use, workboxes?
What do you like or dislike about this system? Any tips for getting started?

Let me know your thoughts!