Talk to me about 'workboxes'

[mrsfrenchy]

I'm intrigued by the idea of workboxes. But it seems that different people use them in different ways.

How do you use workboxes?
How old are your kids? (because how you use them varies greatly on the age of the kids, i assume)
Do you put all work/activities, etc, or only some of it?
Are kids allowed to do whichever activity they want in any order or do you monitor that more closely?
Add whatever other infor you feel is important.

[onyxravnos]

i use work boxes for my preschooler he has four drawers that i fill each day with his 'school' subjects.

such as:

• Books to read about subject of the day/week
• cooking supplies for making bread
• magnifying glass and a bunch of different types of rocks & leaves
• sewing cards

they can be done in any order at any time as long as everything is done at the end of the day. of course this doesn't have Everything we do for school but if we at least get these projects done I can feel like we have completed some work. As he gets older I will add more boxes and of course the contents will change and get more complicated.

[mrsfrenchy]

:bump:

[elizawill]

honestly, mine are used as storage bins now, lol. 

but here's how i used them for 2 years in a row...i explained it in an old post (sorry...easier to link than re-type)...it's a very modified version of what sue patrick instructs.

http://www.mytwomonkeys.webs.com/20082009schedule.htm

[Naturallove]

My "workbox" system isn't as much boxes as folders. I have a large filing bin that has 6 (I think) hanging files in it and in the hanging files I have individual folds with tabs that have the week numbers on them. We are currently on week 11 of this year. In each week folder I put all the worksheets, activities and lesson plans. I filed all the way up till Christmas, then if we got ahead or behind I could adjust for the second half of the year. It is pretty ridged, but really organized. It took one day of work with occasional tweaks here and there, but it's worked well for what we have been doing.  We have been using the classical approach to homeschool this year and are going to be moving to a more waldorf-y method when we start back after the holidays so, I am going to be repurposing the file system pretty soon, but it has served us well. 

[Dancerchic1981]

I didn't set up workboxes this year (kicking myself) but we've done this in the past.

Our system was set up like so:
-each child had three drawers (IKEA)
-one drawer had supplies for the week, the other drawer had a folder with the weeks work in it and there are five paperclipped sections for each day, and the last drawer had any extra fun work to do if they were bored or were waiting for me.
-i had my own system. I scheduled 36 weeks of work and every week would transfer from my system to their drawers.

My youngest was 4/5 so was only really doing it to be like sister. My oldest was 7 and only in 2nd grade.

It worked wonderfully and I'm really upset i didn't set it up this year. With the newborn twins it would have been an amazing help.

[LemonPie]

I use mine more as storage for the things that we pull out every day or several times a week.  So one box for math, one for grammar, one for writing, etc. etc. etc.  This is a vast improvement over the 'stacks' I had sitting everywhere :D  I don't really change anything or put any surprises in like some people do (started out with that, but didn't keep up with it).  Most of my curriculum is very pick up and go and I don't do much prep.  I have 2 of the 3x3 Trofast cabinets from Ikea with the green boxes, so we have more boxes than we need at the moment.  I use one of them to keep plain paper in, and some of the others have books and toys for my 2 yo to get into. 

[ohiomommy1122]

Wow that sounds cool but a lot of prep time ahead, With 4 kids and no room in my small house I don't know if that would be doable but I am totally subbing for ways to make it work for us.