This is our first year using workboxes and so far, the kids love it, I love it, and even though it does take more planning and preparation for me, it is worth it! Knowing that when they are done their workboxes, their schoolwork is over and they can go and play cuts down on the complaining and gives the kids a sense of control over their own learning.
I have found that using workboxes is a great way to keep the kids on task, keep myself organized and most importantly, to infuse more hands-on activities into our homeschooling.
How we use workboxes in our homeschool:
Using workboxes helps us to stay organized, allows the kids to know when their schoolwork is done, and gives me the opportunity to build more hands-on learning into our day.
Each of the kids has a unit with ten drawers. I place one activity in each drawer for each of them at the end of the day so that they are ready for the following day. There are some things such as the sensory bin, auditory station, and unit study activities where only one child can participate each day, so I rotate those when I’m filling the bins each night.
To give you an example, this is a brief overview of some of what were in the workboxes this week as we worked on our Alphabet unit:
Granola Girl shaping her body into the letter “K”. I found some great printable squares of activities such as “shape your body into each letter of the Alphabet”, “jump on the trampoline for 15 minutes”, “run around the house flapping your wings like a bird”, and “ride your bike for 10 minutes”.
I found that adding in these active cards here and there in their workbox drawers boosted their energy level and gave them a bit of a break. You can read more about brain breaks and their importance (particularly for children with special needs or high energy) in the Ultimate Guide to Brain Breaks.
Pom pom sort – all that is needed is pom poms in various colours, an empty egg carton or ice cube tray, and tweezers, tongs, or chopsticks – this is fun and can reinforce learning about colours, patterns, and sizes.
Dancing Queen working on her A Reason for Handwriting workbook.
Einstein working on Beginning Sounds, an Evan Moor Take it to Your Seat Phonics Center
Salt Writing – this is so easy to make. I just put a layer of salt in the bottom of a black Tupperware container (it’s important that the bottom of the container is dark so that there is a contrast) and the kids could use their finger to shape a letter, give the container a shake, and then create another letter. It’s a great reinforcement activity and a good sensory activity as well.
I loved this activity! It was perfect for our Alphabet theme! You can find this printable at www.playfulearning.com. I put it, along with a pair of scissors, a glue stick, and an old magazine in each of the kids’ workboxes. They then had to look through the magazines to try to find a match for each of the letters. There is one sheet for Uppercase letters and one for Lowercase letters.
Snuggle Puppy enjoyed Alphabet Stamping!
The Alphabet Train was another activity from Evan Moor. The kids had to line up the train and then match the lowercase letter wheel to the correct train car. There is also a correlating worksheet.
This Months of the Year activity enabled the kids to put the months in order and then add the corresponding number of days in the month.
Several types of Alphabet Stencils along with paper kept Dancing Queen occupied for a time.
One of the biggest successes was the auditory station I set up with a CD player and pair of headphones. I rotated three audios in the bins for this week, a Lion King book with CD, a CD with 3 Disney stories and corresponding books, and the Math U See Skip Counting CD. I can see that this will be a great addition to our homeschool classroom.
I made up a square on cardstock and wrote “Sensory Bin” on it and whichever child gets that card in one of their bins that day is able to go over and play in the sensory bin of the week for as long as they want to. That little card is a very coveted thing in our house at the moment! I am a bit surprised at how popular the sensory bins have been.
Einstein, working on his individual devotions.
Granola Girl working on an Alphabet Activity card.
Snuggle Puppy obviously really liked the Alphabet Dominoes! I found these here and Miss Optimism helped me colour them and cut them out.
Some of the other things in this week’s workboxes:
- penguin dot-to-dot
- 4 steps to drawing a cat
- Uppercase and Lowercase ABC Worksheet from www.ABCJesusLovesMe.com
- activity sheets (map pages, colouring sheets, etc.) for Story of the World
- my phone number is…worksheet from www.spelloutloud.com
- mini books
- Apologia notebooks
- Math U See workbooks
- magnetic daily calendar
The workboxes really help the kids stay on task. I find them especially effective with my special needs kids as they like to know what will be coming next. I’ve made a little visual below to show some of the activities that we have included in the workboxes.
Since I am homeschooling five of my kids and there are five days in a week, there are several activities such as the Sensory Bins card that rotate so that everyone gets them in their bin one day. Another example of rotating activities is the audio station. For the rotating activities, I also use a lot of learning centers for writing, reading, spelling, science, phonics, and math such as the Evan Moor ones and also file folder games.
Looks great! I really would like to add more centers into our homeschool classroom, I’m in the market for a small book shelf to set this up…I need to start looking more for it….Thanks for stopping by!
Fabulous, fabulous activities! I especially liked the salt writing and the alphabet cutouts. I’m going to use both of these. And probably the rest of your ideas . . . I love the idea of the work boxes. You’re amazing! Thanks so much for sharing!
What a wonderful week. I love seeing all of the great learning. Thanks so much for showing the Playful learning site.
Blessings,
Dawn
Love the idea of the audio station! We have a CD player, but I have it in a place that doesn’t make it as easy for the children to use. I’m going to have to remedy that and purchase another set of headphones.
Lots of fun activities. Glad to hear you’re loving workboxes. I really want to try them this year, but I still need to figure out exactly how I want to do it.
Thank you for linking-up! I love all your great activities!
Workboxes are great, aren’t they?! I wish they worked better for us, but with only one it was too much work….lol! Looks like they had fun! Thanks for linking up to the NOBH.
So glad you are enjoying workboxes. They have been a life saver for us! Your children look like they are having a great time.
Great ideas!!! I was hunting down some sensory helpers for our workboxes because we have one child that is a walking sensory disorder of every which sort and I can’t get enough things to help him. Any awesome resources you could share?
The dollar store is a great place to find sensory items. I make a sensory bin every week (you can check them out by clicking “sensory bins” on the sidebar). An easy one for workboxes is to put some paint in a sandwich size Ziploc baggie and he can make letters and numbers by tracing with his finger. Unrelated to workboxes, we have had a lot of luck with our kids who have sensory disorders with weighted blankets and weighted capes. I buy mine from http://innovaid.ca. They are expensive, but they helped a ton with sleeping and self-regulation for our kids with SPD.
Thank you so much for sharing! This will be our first year with workboxes as well! Starting Monday! 😀
I hope it goes really well for you!
I love this post! I plan to incorporate some of your ideas into our day, especially the salt in the bowl writing idea. My 6 year old will love that!
PS I’ve shared this with my FB followers!
Thanks for sharing this on Facebook Jennifer!
aagh! I would love to sit and have coffee with you:) I have 4 kiddos..1 is adopted. I have been homeschooling for 3 years but this is my 1st year of homeschooling all 4 (I pulled all of them home this summer). I have 2 with LD’s and my other daughter has ESL barriers. I am teaching my youngest 3 all on the same level. I fooled around with workboxes last year, but it felt like too much work for 1. Now, I ‘m wondering if I should try it again. I was wondering…how do you handle yours? Does each kid work through the workboxes at their own rate or do they go to their math workboxes when you are doing a collective math time? I was also curious…when do you plan your rotating activities? I get so distracted when determining mine…I get too many ideas:) Do you plan them each weekend for the following week and how much time do you take doing that? perhaps you could record your whole morning so that I could see how it works…lol Now that would be fun for you:)
I have file folders and a large box labelled “workboxes” that I put ideas for rotating activities in and then on Sunday evenings when I am doing my homeschool planning for the week, I fill the workboxes and add the rotating activities. If we are doing a unit study, then they will usually correspond to that. Having too many ideas (Pinterest is full of them!) is a problem I have too!
We do all of our group work like devotions, prayer time, me reading the Story of the World lesson and the Apologia lesson etc. together before the workboxes and even things that might relate to a worksheet in the workboxes get discussed before and then when we are done that, they do their workboxes so that they work through them at their own pace. I tried the other way and it was a disaster so this is what we found works for us.
I am planning sometime in the coming week to do a bit of a “day in the life” post. I was hoping to have it done by Monday so that I could join in the Not Back to School Blog Hop but it won’t be finished by then but by mid-week hopefully and that might give you a better idea of how it works for us.
awesome response! !thank you so much. I too am thinking that maybe I need to switch doing the all together stuff 1st. Everyone gets too rowdy in the afternoon.
I have 2 other questions that maybe you could answer in your post.
1. I need to work 1 on 1 for math and 1 on 1 for spelling and 1 on 1 for reading (since i have 1 beginning reader and 2 just emerging)…that is ALOT of time just for 1 on1 time. I know you are dealing with special needs too (as I am…my one daughter doesn’t have LD’s, but she was adopted from China at age 3 so her ESL is a barrier to learning). How in the world do you manage all of the 1 on1 phonic time for several kiddos.
2. also…do the things stay the same in their bins all week? or do you change the workboxes every night? that is where I flunked before with workboxes. I was fine to get things together sunday night but it all fell apart after that:) A PS teacher friend of mine suggested just using the same learning activity every day with them.
Thank you so much!!! BTW, I just found your blog myself and I just referred a friend to your post on creating an anti anxiety kit. She adopted her kiddo from foster care and they are really struggling.
I like the task box system you have. It really helps to stay organized and keep things running smoothly. We have a task box system in our special needs classroom and the kids love it!