A Mother’s Journal

I’ve been promising a workbox update, and here it is.  Though I don’t use Sue Patrick’s Workbox System in the purest sense, I highly recommend her book and her methods.  I simply do not have room for the cart, and Michaela LOVES the mystery of her assignments being hidden in the cereal boxes until she pulls them out one by one.  So, for now anyway, we are sticking with the cereal boxes and loving the organization this has brought into our homeschool.

Our system consists of 9 cereal boxes, which I first posted about nearly a year ago.  I fill them up with assignments each evening or each early morning, so they are all ready to go when Michaela starts school for the day.

Box 1.   I think this piece of paper speaks for itself.  And one thing I want to say right now about these boxes is that it takes me out of the loop in a way.  I know that sounds crazy because I’m the teacher and the one who puts the boxes together and the one Michaela comes to with questions, and yet once the ball starts rolling, it’s like Michaela is answering to the boxes getting done and not to me.  I love it!

Box 2.  The next day in her Daily Gram book.  Upon completion, Michaela immediately checks and grades her own paper and we talk about anything she did not understand.

Box 3.  Spelling Power.

Box 4.  Need I say more?  Well, maybe I’d better.  In years past, one of my biggest weaknesses was grading math sheets.  Then the next thing you know we’d be a week or two into ungraded papers when, lo and behold, I’d realize a child totally was not getting something and we had moved on and suddenly were behind!  With the boxes, I do not allow myself to put in the next lesson until I’ve graded what Michaela has done. 

Which brings me to a second point here.  When Michaela is done with something, she sticks it right back in the box.  I pull it out that evening and file it or put it in her end-of-year keepsake book or whatever. 

Anyway, only when math is graded do I put the next assignment in — either the next lesson or review on what she’s not getting. 

Box 5.  Oh, yeah, the chores.  They go in there too, and once again, she’s answering to the box, not to me.  I have been surprised at how little complaining there is when it just comes out of the box and not from my mouth.

Box 6.  Her read-aloud.  And no, she has not finished this book yet.  It has been a slow, wonderful read, along with our other Ambleside books that we are lazily working through.  The good thing?  She has enjoyed this book tremendously and tells me something about it each time she reads, and it’s sticking. 

Box 7.  A test I made to review some writer’s tools we’d talked about just the day before.  (Thank you, Five In A Row.)

Box 8.  Practice your harmonica.  Michaela had been wanting a harmonica.  She got one in her stocking at Christmas and is learning to play it.

Box 9.  Oh yay, the fun box!  This week our Five In A Row Co-op will be centered around Grass Sandals.  Michaela and I “rowed” this book last year, but it’s been very good to go back and revisit it.  It’s a beautiful book.

When we review like this, I like to revisit the art element of the book.  For this assignment I filled the basket with bright pieces of felt in primary colors. I put in black acrylic paint, a black pencil and a black marker.  I took a couple of sheets of blank sketch paper and folded them to make a “greeting card” shape.  Michaela’s asignment was to create a Haiku poem, type it into the card, and then decorate it with inspiration gained after looking through the book.  She was only allowed to use materials that I had chosen based on colors and art media used in the book.

This is how her card turned out!  I’ve used this specified-materials-only concept several times lately to review a FIAR book and to teach art, and it has turned out great each time!  Michaela also gets to use her typewriter, which she loves!

Making The Cereal Boxes:

Several of the cereal boxes are very large family-size boxes, because they hold large books and a lot of stuff.  Some are covered in fabric, some in scrapbook paper. They are embellished with little bits of this and that. I used some glue sticks, but mostly the hot glue gun. Be aware, it takes a few hours to cover 9 cereal boxes. I cut the tops out of the cereal boxes first. I chose either a base paper or fabric for each box and just wrapped the box using a hot glue gun. One sheet of paper was usually not enough. I did one side at a time, wrapping neatly around the bottom and sides. I did fold over and wrap down into the top about two inches for neatness and glued this down as well. It took quite a bit of glue and — AGAIN — time. I, however, LOVE doing things like this. Once a box was covered, I embellished it.  While working, I was thinking of how I would fill the boxes each day!

Tomorrow is a big day, so I better sign off and get some zzzzzzz’s.

A peaceful night to you,