Workboxes for My Third Grader - A Look Inside

In our homeschool, I like to complete the work that I do with all of the children together in the morning. Then, after lunch, the children all have independent work to complete. My seventh grader has her assignments printed from Edu-Track and my boys are using workboxes this year.

Here is a look inside my third grader's workboxes for a recent school day. Workbox #1 contained his Spelling Workout book with a post-it note on the front indicating which page he should complete.
Workbox #2 contained his Math 4 notebook. He is using Teaching Textbooks 4 this year so the notebook is used when he needs to use paper to figure out a math problem. The notebook is also a visual reminder for him to go and complete his next lesson in math at the computer.

Workbox #3 contained his Growing With Grammar 2 book. He is finishing this curriculum from last year and will start on Growing With Grammar 3 later in the school year when he is finished. I simply open the book to the lesson that he needs to complete for that school day.

Workbox #4 contained a worksheet about finding the topic sentence in a paragraph. I am using Daily 6 Trait Writing with my third grader this year and the previous week's lesson was on topic sentences. Since I thought that was a really important concept, I decided to spend a bit more time on topic sentences rather than moving on to the next lesson in Daily 6 Trait Writing.Workbox #5 contained a worksheet from Spectrum Phonics 3. He only completes one side of a page per day. I am finding the phonics review to be sometimes quite easy for him and sometimes quite challenging. Workbox #6 was to play Roll and Multiply with me. I put a few of the game pieces in the box so he would know which game we were going to play. Not surprisingly, Roll and Multiply is a game designed to practice multiplication facts.

Workbox #7 was a reading comprehension activity using the book "Thanksgiving on Thursday" by Mary Pope Osborne and the Pockets of Time Thanksgiving on Thursday pack from Fortunately for You Books. I also included the crayons he would need to complete the activity.

Workbox #8 was simply an index card to remind him to do his typing program on the computer. We are using Typing Instructor for Kids Version 4. This wonderful program taught my daughter how to type and she now types at over 40 words per minute. The boys are learning to type with this program as well. Workbox #9 was FOCUS on Recognizing Cause and Effect. Duncan does this reading comprehension activity four times per week. And, then he's done for the day!

Week in Review - Week 4

Last week was a short week for us as we were out of town on Thursday and Friday at Sauder Village and the Toledo Zoo. Our little trip was the first field trip of the school year for us and it was treasured by all, particularly my husband and I, who loved the time away.

The first three days of the week were filled with the children's regular independent work. We also made progress on our American Revolution unit study. We primarily focused on events leading up to the American Revolution so we studied the Intolerable Acts, Boston Massacre, and Boston Tea Party. We studied two important patriots as well - Patrick Henry and Benjamin Franklin. My daughter has decided that Benjamin Franklin is her favorite person from that time period. We read an excellent picture book biography about Benjamin Franklin that I would recommend, The Amazing Life of Benjamin Franklin.

We left very early Thursday morning to attend Sauder Village for the day. We enjoyed an absolutely lovely day of living history. My husband and I, in particular, love living history museums. We headed first to the "Natives and Newcomers" area where we toured Native American homes and learned a bit about their way of life in the Black Swamp area of Ohio. Most amazing to us was the "large" house that would typically hold 12-16 people. I reflected quite a bit on how my expectations for privacy would be so different if I lived in such close quarters with so many others.

This house was considered a small dwelling and would be used for 6-8 people. Outside the house was a corn grinding station. My little one truly enjoyed beating the big stick in the corn! We spent quite a bit of time in the trading post. Our visit to the trading post fit in perfectly with our studies as we had talked a lot about the fur trade between the Native Americans and the Europeans and the impact of the fur trade on the French and Indian War. The living history trading post person was full of knowledge and was eager to share it with our family. She asked the children lots of questions - some of which they could answer! We learned that the beaver pelt was the base of the currency exchange. The trading post was filled with furs and also lots and lots of items that would be desirable to the Native Americans for trade.Children and pumpkins - I couldn't resist taking a picture. All things autumnal are my weakness! My daughter's favorite shop was the Printer's Shop. We asked the living history printer which printer was like the one that Benjamin Franklin used. He showed us this one and even demonstrated how it would work. The living history printer was a retired newspaper man and was absolutely full of knowledge about the printing industry. When he told Kevin and I that newspapers didn't start using computers for printing until the 70s - WE felt like living history. A visit to the quaint little ice cream shop was much appreciated by all. The generous servings of ice cream for $1.00 each was much appreciated by Kevin!After a full day of living history, we were ready to relax in our hotel. We stayed on-site at the Sauder Village Inn. We were so impressed by this absolutely lovely hotel. The hallways were filled with beautiful quilts and rich woodwork was everywhere I looked.
By far, though, my very favorite part of the hotel was the lovely courtyard which was accessible by walking out the back door of our hotel room to the patio. I sat out there as much as possible in the evening! The sound of the falling water was so relaxing.

And, of course, they had a beautiful pool that the children enjoyed!

We spent the next day at the Toledo Zoo. I was most impressed by how close we could get to so many of the animals. My favorite animal there was the meerkat. We so enjoyed watching the meerkat that was so clearly guarding his group's territory. We were so close we could hear the little noises that he was making. The meerkat must have been used to having people stand and watch him because he didn't seem to perceive us a threat of any kind.

The polar bear exhibit was fantastic. We were able to get so close to the polar bears since they were behind a clear enclosure. We watched a polar bear play in the water - he seemed so very BIG! The display of a polar bear on his hind legs really helped to reinforce the bigness of this animal.

The aviary was incredible. I could have spent hours just in there watching the birds. The birds were free to fly around in each room. This lovely bird landed within inches of me and seemed to demand that I take its picture.

My husband and I were impressed that the wolves had deer carcasses to eat. We were so close to the wolf that we could hear the crunching of bone.

The Toledo Zoo has a fabulous hippo exhibit where visitors can get really close and watch the hippos playing in the water. Sadly, most of the hippos were inside and the one hippo that was outside seemed quite content to simply stay in the mud.

For me, an educational away-from-home field trip is just the thing to prevent homeschool burn-out. Every time I take one of these lovely trips with my family I am fully reminded of why I chose to start out on this homeschool journey.

If you would like to see what other homeschoolers did this week, check out the Weekly Wrap-Up at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.

Week in Review - Week 3

I have been writing our Weeks in Review a week behind so we are actually in our 4th week of school but I am currently posting about last week - our third week of school. I just have to mention that I am working on this blog post while on a mini-vacation. We are at the Sauder Village Inn in Archbold, Ohio. We spent today at the Sauder Village and had a lovely day of living history. My wonderful husband is down at the pool with the children and I am blogging right outside our hotel room in the courtyard. It is truly and completely lovely out here with a lovely flower garden and waterfall. I feel as if I could sit here and soak in the relaxing sounds of the waterfall for weeks. Blogging in the courtyard feels decadent! More about our trip in Week 4's Week in Review!

We are really settling in to the new school year now - I enjoy the routine and the rhythm of our days, though I am seriously wishing I had a kitchen support staff. I suppose that is the wish of most homeschooling mothers.

Week 3 found us primarily studying George Washington in our unit study of the American Revolution. We watched a very interesting video from National Geographic, "The Real George Washington." I did enjoy it, but at times, I found it to be a bit sensationalistic, as if one of the goals of the video was to ferret out some negative historical information about George Washington. Overall, though, I felt the video was well-done and I would recommend it. We also watched American History for Children - American Independence. As usual, this video from Schlessinger Media was quite well-done, informative, and entertaining. I also read "George Washington, A Picture Book Biography" aloud to the children which I thought was excellent.

All of the children are progressing well in their independent work which they usually complete in the afternoon after lunch.

• Amber is particularly enjoying Spanish. We are using Rosetta Stone Homeschool Version 3 and I couldn't be more pleased with the program.
• The new workbox system that I am using with my boys this year is working out extremely well and I am so happy that I decided to give workboxes a try with my boys.
• Amber is almost done with Teaching Textbooks Math 7 now and will start Teaching Textbooks Pre-Algebra soon.
• Mason is taking a two week break from his normal math curriculum to focus exclusively on long division as he was struggling with long-division problems.
• Amber is continuing to work on her novel and is almost done with the third chapter now. Go, Amber! She is using "Learn to Write the Novel Way" although she hasn't referred to the curriculum in quite a while (she started working on the curriculum this past summer). She's been writing, writing, writing.

Once again, one of the highlights of our week was our art lesson on Friday. This week's lesson focused on the color wheel, Expressionism, and mixing colors. The lesson was a bit different from the other two we have completed in that the video portion was quite long. We watched the video and simply paused it when we needed more time to complete the project. In retrospect, I think it would have worked a bit better to complete the color wheel in one lesson and the art project in another but we followed the lesson as presented and completed them both in one lesson. So, this week's art lesson took us about 2 1/2 hours to complete.

First, we followed along and completed a landscape drawing in pencil, practicing perspective. Starting with the three primary colors, we then added secondary and then tertiary colors to the color wheel. After mixing each color, we needed to add that color to the landscape drawing, gradually painting in all of the areas. We were encouraged to use color to express our emotions as the Expressionists did. Amber LOVED this lesson - this was her favorite lesson so far. Duncan and I really enjoyed it, although I felt a bit rushed to finish my painting at the end. Mason, on the other hand, did not enjoy this lesson as much as the others. Regardless, I thought all of the projects turned out great (except mine - I think mine is TOO yellow!).

I just love the use of color in Amber's painting.Mason's turned out great - complete with a mushroom house!Duncan's is so bright and cheery - his house even has a smiley face!I was still working on mine when everybody was done and everybody wanted to eat so I felt a bit stressed at the end. I added WAY too much yellow to fill in the rest of the picture. Lastly, keeping with my goal of using up the "random experiment" kits that we have collected over the years, we completed the activities in the Crazy Crystals kit.

All of the activities in this kit center around cross-linked polyacrylamide copolymer gel. They are uber-absorbent little crystals and are used in disposable diapers. The highlight of the activities was tinting the crystals with water and Tub Tints. Each of the children got to tint their own bag of "crazy crystals."

Then we waited until the next day when the crystals had absorbed most of the tinted water to transfer them to paper towels.Finally, we made a cool rainbow in a tube. The crystals mixed with each other and made other colors in between the crystals.That was our week in review - if you would like to see what other homeschoolers are doing, check out the Week in Review at Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers.

Advantages to the Workbox System

We are in our fourth week of using workboxes and I truly love them for my boys. Our workbox system isn't fancy at all - I used the printables that were included with the purchase of Sue Patrick's book to label the boxes. I was able to purchase everything I needed from our local Target - plain, plastic shoeboxes and two shoe racks. I have seen some amazing workbox systems with adorable graphics online but our system is quite plain.

I have found many advantages, both expected and unexpected, to using workboxes with my boys.

• Workboxes help my boys navigate through their independent work more independently.


• Since I need to prepare the workboxes each evening for the next day, I am forced to keep up with their grading on a daily basis. My boys like getting the quick feedback on their work and I am able to target quickly any areas that need additional practice. My boys are able to make corrections to their work while it is still fresh in their minds. Checking over assignments on a DAILY basis has always been a struggle for me and the workbox system helps me to stay accountable. The boys expect to find their graded work in the workbox with their new work in that subject.


• I am finally playing educational games with my youngest child on a regular basis. He thrives on educational games with me and I have purchased many of them over the years. Previously, I would plan on playing a game with him...sometime during the day but that "sometime" often didn't happen. Now, he has a workbox with a game piece from an educational game in it almost every day and he brings it to me and we play. We both win - I spend quality time with him, he spends quality time with me, he gains important practice in basic academic skills, and he gets the enjoyment of playing a game with me, and I get the enjoyment of playing a game with him.


• Since some workboxes are marked with a "Work with Mom" label and others are not, the boys rarely ask questions when the workbox does not have a "Work with Mom" label. They know the expectation is that they should be able to complete the work on their own.


• I am using more of the curriculum supplements that I have purchased throughout our years of homeschooling and picked up through PaperBackSwap. For example, I purchased a neat book, "American History Mini-Books" several years ago. I even went so far as to make copies of all of the books and then...I never used them. Both of my boys have had workboxes to complete in which they were assigned one of the mini-books to read. The mini-books on George Washington, The Boston Tea Party, American Revolution, and Paul Revere's Ride have all directly related to our current unit of study. The boys have also used the books in writing activities.


• The boys can easily see how much independent work they have left to complete and that seems to be quite motivating to them to continue working.


• I am seeing much less "goofing off" between assignments this year. I like to complete the studies we all do together in the morning but if I am running late for any reason, the boys can easily get started on their first workbox while they wait for me. When one workbox is done, they get to work quickly on the next one and then the next. I have seen far less "wandering about aimlessly behavior" during the school day.


• My boys are doing more practice work to help them remember and reinforce what we are doing in our time together or in their independent work. I am working on putting together an independent game to review the Latin and Greek word roots that we have covered last year and this year so far. How will I encourage the boys to play the game and review the word roots? I will put it in a workbox!


• While my boys do take their workboxes to various places in the house to complete their work, they do faithfully bring the finished workboxes back to their workbox station. Therefore, I have far less "find the schoolwork" games to play than I used to.


• The workbox system really helps to make sure that my boys complete all of their independent work every day. The boys are easily able to look at the boxes, see what still needs to be done, and complete the work. I remember asking my middle son every day last school year, "Did you do English, your handwriting, your reading assignment..."

For my boys and me, the workbox system has many more advantages than disadvantages. The only disadvantage I have found so far with using the workbox system is that preparing the workboxes each evening IS time-consuming. Since my older two children have swim team every evening, I sometimes feel a bit stressed getting everything prepared before we need to leave. The peacefulness and organization of the next school day is great payment for my work in the evening, though.

The workbox system is definitely working for me this school year. If you would like to see what is working for other bloggers, check out Works for Me Wednesday at We Are THAT Family.

Atelier Art, Focus on Lines - Lesson 1

One of the big highlights of my curriculum choices this school year has been Atelier Art Level 5. We have completed three lessons so far and each one has been a success. The very first lesson on Lines has been the favorite lesson for my boys so far. They LOVED the lesson on Lines!

After watching the video lesson and completing the warm-up drawing activity, each of us chose a simple animal shape and drew the outline of the animal. Mason, Duncan, and I all drew owls but Amber chose a teddy bear. Then, the assignment was to fill in the basic animal outline with all different kinds of lines. The assignment was simple and I was surprised by just how much the children enjoyed completing the art project.

My third grader did a great job with his owl drawing - so much detail and so many different kinds of lines!
My fifth grader truly embraced this project and continued working on his owl long after everybody had finished their project. The detail in his owl was amazing!

My seventh grader completed a delightful project with lots of color - I love the plaid! The assignment was supposed to be in black and white but...Amber wanted to use colored markers so I thought that would be just fine.Lastly, here is MY owl creation! I decided that rather than skulking about during their art class, encouraging them and cleaning up, that I would actually take the class along with them. I am having a lot of fun and I am finding the projects to be challenging yet rewarding.My boys loved this assignment so much that they asked to watch the art lesson again in the evening. Then they spent hours creating line design projects. I KNOW a curriculum choice was the right one when my children complete ADDITIONAL projects on THEIR OWN TIME!