What's Inside the Workboxes for Third Grade?

While we are still on holiday break (yea!), this post gives you a peek inside my 3rd grade son's workboxes on a typical school day a few weeks ago. I have been using workboxes with my boys since we started school back in August. I am absolutely thrilled with the workbox system and how it is working in our homeschool. I have found many advantages to using workboxes with my boys and will continue to do so when we start back to school in January.



Both of my boys usually have 10-12 workboxes on a typical school day. As a family, we complete geography, Latin and Greek roots vocabulary study, art, science, and history. The boys complete math, spelling, reading comprehension, grammar, writing, handwriting, phonics, and typing independently (for the most part) with their workboxes. They also often have workboxes that reinforce the work that we are doing in our current science or history unit study or review boxes.



Box 1: Spelling Workout C - complete one page and do "Test Me" on Spelling City. I recently started using Spelling City for spelling list practice with the boys and I highly recommend the website. On the first day of the week, they can use Spelling City to do the pre-test and I no longer have to spend time reading the words to them. They also do their final spelling tests on Spelling City so, again, I no longer have to spend time reading the words to them. Throughout the week, they are assigned games or other activities from Spelling City to help them study their words.

Box 2: Daily Handwriting Practice, Evan-Moor

Box 3: Assigned pages from "The Velveteen Rabbit" along with a reading comprehension activity from Fortunately For You Books.

Box 4: A Christmas tree colors and shapes activity that I printed out from Enchanted Learning on cardstock. After coloring the tree's decorations according to the directions, Duncan painted the entire tree green using watercolors for a crayon resist effect.

Box 5: Spectrum Phonics 3 - one side of a page.

Box 6: Calendar project - Duncan is creating his own calendar for 2010. The calendar project is a fairly big project that I am breaking up into little chunks for him. At the end, he will have a calendar for 2010 that he has made himself and he will have learned more about holidays throughout the year.

Box 7: FOCUS on Understanding Main Idea and Details - reading comprehension. Duncan completes one lesson per day.

Box 8: Typing Instructor for Kids Version 4 - practice for 15 minutes.

Box 9: BrainPop Jr. video - Silent e and read a book/take the quiz on Raz-Kids. Both of these activities are completed on the computer.

Box 10: Writing With Ease Level 1 - completed with me.

Box 11: Grammar By This Book from Fortunately For You Books - The First Thanksgiving Day. Duncan completed two pages in this grammar activity book per day.

Box 12: Teaching Textbooks Math 4. Duncan completes his lessons on the computer so I put his math notebook and the multiplication table he is currently using in his workbox.